From devastating dramas to sharp satires and genre-bending thrillers, this year’s feminist fiction on screen refused easy answers—and demanded our attention. These films and series center women’s agency, ambition and survival, offering stories that linger long after the credits roll.
Here are some of the standout feminist fiction watches of the year.
Rez Ball
Directed by Sydney Freeland
At the outset of director Sydney Freeland’s Rez Ball, the Chuska Warriors, a Navajo Nation high school basketball team, have their eyes set on the New Mexico state championships. And they have a pretty good shot at getting there, especially with their star player, Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind), back in the game after a devastating loss. Nataanii’s mother and sister, who were killed by a drunk driver, have pride of place in the stands, their empty seats marked by small memorials. Player Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt) believes his still-struggling best friend will pull through, an impression that proves starkly wrong when Nataanii takes his own life the following day.
Even with the dedicated leadership of Coach Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten)—a former star on the school’s championship-winning girls’ team, who made it to the WNBA but now struggles to negotiate her passion for coaching the team with her desire to leave the reservation—the Warriors flounder after the loss of Nataanii. The burden of holding the team together falls on newly appointed captain Jimmy, who has his own troubles, including a deep concern over where his life can or will go. Not just your average sports movie, Rez Ball takes the genre and adds in layers of nuance, atmosphere and heart that go well beyond the film’s skillfully shot (and beautifully played) game of basketball.
Rez Ball is available for streaming on:
Woman of the Hour
Directed by Anna Kendrick
Actor Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut is much more than just fodder for the frenzy for true crime media. Loosely based on the case of Rodney Alcala—a serial killer who was eventually convicted of seven murders but who may have had upwards of 130 victims—the film homes in on a bizarre detail of Alcala’s life. In 1978, toward the end of his killing spree, he was a winning contestant on the popular game show, The Dating Game. Woman of the Hour takes this moment and builds from it through the perspective of Sheryl (played by Kendrick), an aspiring actor who was the bachelorette on that week’s show. She found Alcala unsettling once they met face-to-face and refused to date him, thereby narrowly avoiding becoming one of his victims.
While Woman of the Hour depicts a few of Rodney’s assaults and murders, painting a picture of a twisted man who somehow managed to charm people with his intellectual and initially unassuming nature, what’s remarkable about the film is its refusal to dwell in gratuitous depictions of violence (there are a few intense killing scenes, but they’re mercifully brief). Instead, by centering Sheryl’s experiences, Kendrick gives her a chance to reclaim some agency as she bucks up against the more conventional, but no less insidious, misogyny of the television industry. And throughout, the film underscores the haunting way Alcala was able to circumvent detection for more than a decade—even after being on national television—and the patriarchal privilege that allowed so many people to look the other way for far too long.
Woman of the Hour is available for streaming on:
The Six Triple Eight
Directed by Tyler Perry
If you’re looking for an inspiring story of persevering against the odds, The Six Triple Eight is the place to start. The film uses a tragic love story—between the ambitious Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian) and her white, Jewish beau, who enlists in the Army as a pilot—as the lens through which the real-life events surrounding the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an almost entirely Black, World War II-era battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, come into stark relief. Led by Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington), the 6888 was deployed overseas in the final year of the war to complete a seemingly impossible task: sort 17 million pieces of mail, part of a multiyear backlog of correspondence between soldiers and their families.
They were given six months, in subpar working conditions, and expected to fail. You might think watching women struggle through rigorous basic training only to be sent to Europe to sort mail wouldn’t make for gripping entertainment, but the film is both moving and riveting, as the women are forced to confront not only the painful losses of war, but the sexism and racism rife within a military not yet ready to accept Black women among its ranks. The Six Triple Eight won’t just make you want to learn more about the actual women who made up the battalion, it will have you rooting for them from start to finish.
The Six Triple Eight is available for streaming on:
The Substance
Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat
Make no mistake, The Substance, the sophomore feature of French writer and director Coralie Fargeat, is a work of extreme body horror, in all its blood-and-guts glory, despite the vibrant, saturated jewel tones and stunning sets that make up its opening scenes. One of its appeals is how the film makes the beautiful horrifying and vice versa, with often visceral attention to detail, each of its moments carefully crafted. Marked by sublime oppositions, The Substance is at once satire and drama, and some of its most profoundly disturbing moments are the ones completely sans gore.
Elisabeth Sparkle (played unrelentingly and skillfully by Demi Moore) is an aging actor, a formerly beloved household name with the awards and the Hollywood star to show for it. She’s also all too aware of how her shine is dimming with each year that goes by. After a freak accident, Elisabeth is offered the chance at a new beginning through “The Substance,” a black market medical procedure that creates a flawless version of yourself through whom you can live out your dreams. But there’s a catch. Offering a familiar lesson with a plot that refuses to be subtle as it offers continuous surprises, The Substance is a haunting and visceral indictment of the beauty industrial complex, celebrity culture and how women have been conditioned to want the impossible: perfection.
The Substance is available for streaming on:
Audrey’s Children
Directed by Ami Canaan Mann
In 1969, when the real-life Dr. Audrey Evans was recruited to become director and chief of oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the survival rate for neuroblastoma, a cancer most frequently occurring in infants and young children, was horrifically low. Due in large part to her interventions, research and dedication, about 80 percent of children treated for this type of cancer now survive. The biopic Audrey’s Children, directed by Ami Canaan Mann, chronicles the first few years of Evans’ time at CHOP, where she and her colleagues try to brighten the days of their young patients by combating the fear and pain of scary medical equipment and aggressive treatments while stemming the tide of heartache and anxiety of the patients’ parents and navigating hospital bureaucracy.
Evans recognized that many families withdrew their children from treatment because of trouble with housing and finances. She led the charge to create what is now Ronald McDonald House Charities, which provides housing and support to families whose children are in care. Played with great felicity by Game of Thrones alum Natalie Dormer, Evans is an effervescent presence in the otherwise dreary CHOP. And while she’s often the only woman in the room and her methods are sometimes too radical for hospital higher-ups, her expertise and competence aren’t questioned, and the film rarely manifests her gender as an impediment to her work—a refreshing change for a biopic of a trailblazing woman.
Audrey’s Children is available for streaming on:
Egghead & Twinkie
Written and directed by Sarah Kambe Holland
A sweet lesbian road movie, Egghead & Twinkie began with a one-minute pitch video posted on TikTok by writer-director Sarah Kambe Holland in August 2020. The video went viral. Primarily financed via a crowd-funding campaign, the film was shot during the pandemic, and by 2023 was making its way to film festivals around the U.S. and winning awards.
Seventeen-year-old Twinkie (Sabrina Jieafa), an Asian American aspiring animator raised by adoptive white parents in Florida, has been secretly flirting online with BD (Ayden Lee), a lesbian influencer in Texas, for several months. When BD invites Twinkie to attend a party she’s DJing, Twinkie jumps at the chance, even though it’s nearly a thousand miles away, hoping BD might become her first girlfriend. And if she’s also trying to escape the ire of her conservative parents, to whom she recently came out, who can blame her?
She drags her childhood best friend, Egghead (Louis Tomeo), a nerdy white boy about to leave for his freshman year at Stanford, along for the ride—without telling him anything about BD or their budding relationship. Tackling friendship, young love, race and identity, as well as coming out and coming into your own as a young adult, it’s a wholesomely quirky, modern take on a familiar story.
Egghead & Twinkie is available for streaming on:
Being Maria
Directed by Jessica Palud
Adapted from the 2018 memoir My Cousin Maria Schneider by journalist Vanessa Schneider, Jessica Palud’s Being Maria attempts to restore some agency to the infamously mistreated late French actor. The daughter of a model and a well-known actor, Maria (Anamaria Vartolomei) finds herself in small roles until, at 19, she’s given what seems like the chance of a lifetime: a role starring opposite American actor Marlon Brando (played in the film by Matt Dillon) in Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s (Giuseppe Maggio) Last Tango in Paris.
Despite the sexually explicit nature of the film, the production is going well for Maria until her costar and director collude to film a rape scene without her consent in order to get, sickeningly, a more authentic reaction for the camera. While the sex is simulated, the scene is not, and Maria leaves the set traumatized and humiliated. Being Maria builds up to this cataclysmic moment—then tumbles forward into its protagonist’s dark unraveling. What follows are Maria’s attempts to regain control of her life amid scandal and drug addiction while the world watches.
Penelope
Cocreated by Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn
An atmospheric and enigmatic teen series, Penelope takes on the perspective of a 16-year-old girl (Megan Stott) who leaves a group wilderness outing, buys as much camping gear as she can and slips away into the forests of the Pacific Northwest to commune with nature. In the first episode, Penelope seems unhappy with her life, although a brief text exchange with her mother and the voice recordings she makes for her parents (but doesn’t send) hint at her leaving behind a loving family. “I’m not running away,” Penelope tells her parents in one such recording. “I feel like I’m running towards something.”
Instead of offering immediate answers, Penelope is content to bask in the wonder of nature and chronicle both its protagonist’s ingenuity and her foibles out in the wilderness; for example, she successfully hops a moving train with a heavy bag of gear but fails to set up a tent for the first time in the dark. The series refuses easy interpretation, leaving only breadcrumbs to explain why Penelope left civilization or what exactly she’s doing out in the woods.
Penelope is available for streaming on:
Joan
Created by Anna Symon
Joan, starring Sophie Turner, is a smartly shot and gripping limited series about the rise of real-life London jewel thief Joan Hannington, who served as a consultant on the script. As such, it offers a dramatic, fictionalized portrayal that’s still grounded in reality and doesn’t shy away from the tragedies and unlikely triumphs of Joan’s life. Married to an abusive man and threatened by gangsters to whom he owes money, Joan takes her daughter, Kelly, and runs when a violent encounter leaves her fearing for their lives. To protect Kelly, Joan reluctantly places her into foster care.
Desperate to get herself back on her feet and get her daughter back as quickly as possible, Joan tries to work at her sister’s hair salon, but eventually applies for a job at a high-end jeweler. One day on a whim, she swallows some uncut diamonds from the store’s safe—and thus begins a surprisingly successful criminal career. Set amid the glitz, glamour and grit of the 1980s and based on Hannington’s autobiography, Joan reimagines the heist genre through the eyes of a woman dedicated to reclaiming her child, yet all the same lured by the sparkling 24-carat promises of wealth and freedom.
Joan is available for streaming on:
No Good Deed
Created by Liz Feldman
If the lure of a new dark comedy by Dead to Me mastermind Liz Feldman isn’t enough to draw you into the domestic schemes and dramatic twists of her new series, No Good Deed, its impressive and eclectic cast (Linda Cardellini, Lisa Kudrow, Teyonah Parris, Ray Romano, Abbi Jacobson, Luke Wilson, Poppy Liu, O-T Fagbenle and Denis Leary) is sure to do the trick.
Lydia and Paul Morgan (Kudrow and Romano) are selling their beloved house, a very desirable property in a great Los Angeles neighborhood. Naturally, there are a number of eager prospective buyers: a few young couples, a washed-up soap opera star trying to go incognito and a rival realtor who’s been dying to see the inside of this house for years. But nothing is quite what it seems. A dark tragedy haunts the property and its owners, some of the buyers have questionable motives, others have relationships that are straining at the seams, and even those with the best intentions will find themselves paving their own dark paths.
No Good Deed is available for streaming on:
The Residence
Executive produced by Paul William Davies, Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers
A Shondaland production at its best, The Residence offers all that we’ve come to love and expect from this powerhouse studio: political scandal, unforgettable characters, interpersonal intrigue and the brilliance of an intricately woven narrative. Set in a fictional White House, The Residence takes a humorous yet incisive look at the social and political complexities of the lives of those who live and work there. To lend a kernel of truth to the fiction, the limited series is based on Kate Andersen Brower’s bestseller The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, which chronicles the labor—and drama!—that goes on behind the scenes in the kitchens, parlors, garages, back rooms and gardens of one of the most well-known houses in the world.
Described in Netflix publicity materials as “a screwball whodunnit set in the upstairs, downstairs and backstairs of the White House,” The Residence is an offbeat murder mystery that veers from the sincere to the wildly comedic. Best of all is the show’s detective Cordelia Cupp, played masterfully by Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black), who stars alongside a talented ensemble, including many faces you’ll recognize, like Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Susan Kelechi Watson (This Is Us) and Randall Park (Fresh Off the Boat), to name a few. Detective Cupp easily measures up to the quirky charm, attention to detail and unorthodox techniques of some of the most memorable TV and film detectives (a little Columbo, a little Jessica Fletcher, a little Benoit Blanc). Both she and the show will keep you guessing until the final scene.
The Residence is available for streaming on:
North of North
Created by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
Set in the fictional town of Ice Cove in the real Canadian territory of Nunavut, part of Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, North of North fits neatly into the subgenre of sitcoms categorized by people comedically blowing up their lives. Shot on location with a primarily Inuit cast, North of North is Netflix’s first Canadian original series, coproduced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in partnership with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Every episode is directed by a BIPOC woman.
Raised by a young, alcoholic mother (now sober) and never having met her father, 26-year-old Siaja (Anna Lambe) starts the show as a wife and mother with vague ambitions to do more with her life. With a husband who’s the town golden boy but contemptuous of Siaja’s needs, two mysterious “Southerners” on a research visit, and a white administrator at the community center who’s clueless and well-meaning by turns, Siaja’s life is about to take a drastic turn. Irreverent, clever and fun, North of North doesn’t lean too hard on cringe comedy even as Siaja makes a series of public blunders. Instead, the show encourages us to root for her as she learns to see the tight-knit community she’s grown up in through new eyes—and her family, friends and neighbors learn to see her in return.
North of North is available for streaming on:
The Four Seasons
Created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield
Netflix’s new limited series The Four Seasons might be best described as a cozy, midlife-crisis dramedy. Even better, it boasts a cast of beloved comedy geniuses who shift from witty one-liners and clever repartee to moments of surprising emotional depth.
As suggested by the title, the series follows its main characters—three married couples who’ve known each other for decades—as they enact their annual tradition of seasonal vacations, beginning with a spring getaway to celebrate Nick (Steve Carrell) and Annie’s (Kerri Kenney-Silver) 25th wedding anniversary at their lake house. Also along for the ride are Kate (Tina Fey) and her husband, Jack (Will Forte), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and his husband, Claude (Marco Calvani).
Part of the pleasure of the show is watching how long-established friend dynamics come into play, especially when Nick drops a bombshell that threatens to unravel the entire group. Created by Tina Fey (30 Rock), Lang Fisher (Never Have I Ever) and Tracey Wigfield (Great News)—all seasoned, whip-smart writers and producers—it’s no wonder The Four Seasons balances perfect polish with a captivating rawness as these longtime friends navigate pivotal moments in their 50s together.
The Four Seasons is available for streaming on:
Ironheart
Created by Chinaka Hodge
Ironheart operates on a typical premise for Marvel Television: It takes a supporting character from another Marvel Cinematic Universe property and builds a spin-off series around her life. In this case, that character is girl-genius Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), an MIT student who invents a suit that rivals Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor, imagining it might empower first responders to more effectively save lives. But Ironheart also goes beyond its plethora of techy montages and fight scenes, asking viewers to confront the slippage between good intentions and bad actions.
Back in Chicago after things at MIT go awry, Riri sets out to rebuild her damaged suit. Her desire is an expensive one, though, and she easily falls in with a group of morally ambiguous thieves when they promise her cash and creative freedom in exchange for her technical skills. Featuring dynamic characters, fun action sequences and a series of compelling philosophical questions about artificial intelligence, Ironheart is a solid and entertaining entry into the MCU.
Ironheart is available for streaming on:
The Better Sister
Created by Olivia Milch
Chloe (Jessica Biel) has it all. She’s a well-known editor of a popular magazine, The Real Thing. Her husband, Adam (Corey Stoll), is a high-powered attorney. And her stepson, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan), is a privileged but down-to-earth teenage boy who, with his folks, splits his time between their Manhattan penthouse and their home in the Hamptons. But Chloe’s been receiving threats online and in real life, backlash primarily to her magazine’s feminist outlook. Then everything changes in a flash when Adam is brutally murdered, Ethan stands accused and Chloe must confront not only her own grief and shock but also the unwanted return of her estranged sister, Nicky (Elizabeth Banks), a recovering alcoholic and addict whose presence decimates the last vestiges of Chloe’s seemingly perfect life.
In addition to strong, nuanced performances by Biel and Banks, who work through their fraught sisterly history with believably vacillating love and loathing, Lorraine Toussaint plays a standout supporting role as Catherine, The Real Thing’s strategically minded publisher and Chloe’s boss and mentor. The Better Sister, based on a novel by Alafair Burke, is a gripping thriller in which the murder mystery at its core serves as a background for a far more compelling meditation on the deeply felt effects of class difference and generational trauma on a family and those around them.
The Better Sister is available for streaming on:
Letters From the Past
Created by Rana Denizer
Netflix’s limited series, Letters From the Past, a Turkish production, starts with a world-splintering discovery: Elif (Güneş Şensoy)—a young woman whose beloved mother, Fatma (Ipek Türktan), suffers from such advanced cognitive decline that she no longer recognizes her daughter—discovers a letter with her name on it amid her mother’s things.
Shockingly, the letter is from Elif’s mother, but not the mother who raised her. Her biological mother was one of Fatma’s 17-year-old students, who asked Fatma to raise Elif in her stead. The letter’s provenance dates back to a project Fatma assigned in 2003 to a group of high schoolers in her Literature Club, for which students were meant to write letters to themselves or someone else to be read 20 years later. Unable to get clear answers from Fatma, and with very little information besides the letters from students in her mother’s memorabilia, Elif embarks on a quest to track down the other members of the club. Letters From the Past offers two juxtaposed storylines: one of them Elif’s search for her biological mother, and the other the trials and tribulations of the 2003 Literature Club members as they grapple with coming of age during their teenage years in the past and navigate the bombshell effects of Elif’s revelations, and their own letters, in the present.
Letters From the Past is available for streaming on:
Thanks to Livia Follet and Vivian Rose for their support in compiling and editing this piece.
Great Job Aviva Dove-Viebahn & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
