There was a deep frustration within the women’s movement with the lack of political participation after decades of peaceful pleas and arguments in London in 1912. Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is an apolitical young laundress, wife, and gentle mother when we first meet her at her hellish workplace. She is too busy trying to make ends meets to think about improving the state of things in a fundamental way. She comes across some rock throwing suffragettes on her route who demand that women should have a right to vote. Maud is unimpressed by such scandalous behavior at first but her ideas about the possibility for social change start to expand. She experiences how the protests are repressed and the brutal actions taken by the executive and judicial sectors that react to what are sound demands towards equality with police violence and force-feeding.
SUFFRAGETTE shows the politicization and radicalization process of its protagonist against the backdrop of a historical event. It is only the aggressive reactions of her colleagues, neighbors, and her own husband that turn Maude into an extremist who ends up being a terrorist together with pharmacist Edith (Helena Bonham-Carter). SUFFRAGETTE has a team of women behind the camera: the director is Sarah Gavron (BRICK LANE) and the screenplay was written by Abi Morgan (SHAME, THE IRON LADY). Meryl Streep makes an appearance as the fearless suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst.

Anna Stemmler

Translation: Elinor Lewy