Indigenous FeminismFilms

Writer and director Alfonso Cuarón has described Roma as a love letter to all the women who raised him. It's a beautiful rumination on all the 'hoods' women go through: girlhood, womanhood, motherhood. A domestic drama about a maid and the middle-class family she cares for in Mexico City, the story is told in crisp black-and-white, but it doesn't take long to see that a woman's work never ventures far out of the gray area.

Through an Indigenous Peruvian woman living with inherited fear, the film examines how wartime sexual violence survives in bodies, households, music, and unequal relations of service.

Girls aren't allowed to be Whangara chiefs. But that's not acceptable to Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), the 11-year-old powerhouse who believes her destiny is to ride whales and lead her tribe. Courage, leadership, and defiance are all at play in this Kiwi drama from Niki Caro.