The much-anticipated Suffragette – selected to open the BFI London Film Festival later this year – depicts the British women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Director Sarah Gavron has reunited with her Brick Lane screenwriter Abi Morgan (who also scripted The Iron Lady and BBC TV’s The Hours) to bring us the stirring story of a crusade that surprisingly (or perhaps not) has never been explored in such detail on the big screen before.
Carey Mulligan heads an all-star cast – including Meryl Streep (playing central figure Emmeline Pankhurst) Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Romola Garai and Anne-Marie Duff – as Maud, a working-class housewife who defies her husband (Ben Whishaw) and risks losing her children by taking part in the increasingly high-stakes struggle for the women’s vote.
This is a costume drama, but an undeniably gritty one, showing the violent aspects of the movement and the raw hunger for equality behind it. Beautifully shot (Gavron is the first commercial filmmaker given permission to shoot in the Houses of Parliament) and with another persuasive central performance from Mulligan, this is a historic, urgently compelling film that may well garner awards as well as fantastic press.