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Gender and Sexuality

Explore depictions of masculinity, femininity, and sexual identity.

Alex Heeney / January 23, 2022

Happening looks at the culture of shame around abortion

Audrey Diwan’s Happening follows a young woman’s journey in the 1960s to even find a backstreet abortionist amidst a culture of shame and silence.

Lindsay Pugh / January 6, 2022

The Lost Daughter is a skillful adaptation by Maggie Gyllenhaal

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut skillfully adapts Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, the story of a middle-aged woman who shouldn’t have had kids and is now spiraling while on vacation. The film is now streaming worldwide on Netflix.

Alex Heeney / October 5, 2021

A Tale of Love and Desire is a sensitive coming-of-ager

In Leyla Bouzid’s A Tale of Love and Desire, things get complicated for eighteen-year-old Ahmed (Sami Outabali) when love and desire become intertwined.

A still from Mad Women's Ball, in which two women stare each other down in a dimly lit, dingy hospital room.

Orla Smith / September 12, 2021

TIFF Review: The Mad Women’s Ball is a shallow look at ‘female hysteria’

Mélanie Laurent’s The Mad Women’s Ball suffers in comparison to Alice Winocour’s Augustine (2011), which tackles the same story with more psychological complexity.

Alex Heeney / September 12, 2021

Benediction thoughtfully depicts a community of gay men

Benediction may be Terence Davies’s gayest film yet: a character study of a WWI poet who keeps trying to reinvent himself and find solace.

A still from The Surrogate, in which we see a three shot of two men and a young woman looking forward, toward the camera.

Orla Smith / July 9, 2021

The Surrogate: Jasmine Batchelor stuns in a smart, thorny exploration of surrogacy

Jasmine Batchelor gives one of the best performances of the year in Jeremy Hersh’s The Surrogate, a smart and sensitive drama about a pregnancy surrogate who finds out the foetus will be born with Down Syndrome.

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