8 best documentaries about women rights
A long way from its origins in the 19th century, the Feminism Movement has come. Since then, women have gone on to serve and vote, take part in the workforce, and launch businesses, and today they seem to have even more agency than ever before about their lives and professions. Yet the fight for civil justice has not stopped. Women, of course, go to work, but they get paid less for equivalent jobs. Women still get to vote, but in most parts of the world, getting to the top of the political ladder is also incredibly difficult for them. They get stuck on the highways, rape is on the rise, parents of girls are still paying dowry, and infanticide among women is still a fact. Everywhere, sexism still persists at work, in family dinners, in schools, on the streets. We are in 2018, and while a great deal has changed, there is still a very, very long way off from full equality. Posted On November 30th, 2020
FINDING HOME, 2014
The documentary chronicles the life experiences of three Cambodian women who, due to economic difficulties, were forced into sex trafficking. Finding Home reveals the pressures and hardships of being low-ranked in the power system of slave owners and exploitative men, beyond the tale of how they came into the business. After years of dealing with the peculiar difficulties that are part of this exploitative exchange, the Cambodian women recover over the years and get their life back together. They live to share the story, and it's an empathic work that Finding Home does.
THE TESTIMONY, 2015
The Testimony is a 2015 American short-documentary film about the 'Minova Tribunal,' held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo Army in 2014 to investigate the rapes and massacres committed against women by government forces in Minova in 2012. That was the greatest rape conviction in the history of the DRC.
BORN INTO BROTHELS, 2004
Documentary photographer Zana Briski travelled to the underworld of Calcutta to photograph prostitutes in the area. In return, she promised to teach the fundamentals of photography to the prostitutes' children so that the children could capture their own lives on the streets of one of the poorest cities in the world. The resulting photos were shown around the world, sometimes astonishing; many of them are seen in this film, which received the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2005.
INDIA’S DAUGHTER, 2015
The life and death of Indian medical student Jyoti Singh, whose rape and murder by gang rapists revealed Indian society's brutal misogyny. INDIA'S DAUGHTER is the tale of an outstanding and inspirational young woman's short life and vicious gang rape and murder in Delhi in December 2012.
#CHICAGOGIRL: THE SOCIAL NETWORK TAKES ON A DICTATOR, 2013
An American teenager from the Chicago suburbs is helping to lead the Syrian movement. She helps her network uncover regime crimes through social media. Yet everyone has to pick their arsenal as the violence rages: Facebook or AK-47s.
THE TRUE COST, 2015
The film illustrates how India's demand for cotton has contributed to the planting of genetically modified (GM) cotton, and how the monopoly inherent in its use by seed firms causes cotton prices to grow, leading to suicides among farmers who lose their land because they are unable to pay the higher price for cotton.
THE VESSEL, 2014
A tidal wave is damaging an elementary school in a small town and sweeping 46 children out to sea. Music, dance, fireworks and childbirth will all disappear from the village within the next 10 years, trapped in eternal mourning. A young man named Leo (Lucas Quintana) falls off the pier one night and drowns, but three hours later, he mysteriously revives. As Leo is inspired to create a strange building out of the school's ashes, the townspeople wonder if this is a message from Heaven.
SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY, 2014
Mary Dore directed the documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry in 2014, which documents the activities and milestones of the emancipation struggle of women in the United States from 1966 to the early 1970s. The film includes comments from over thirty feminists who have been fighting to promote the women's movement.
