Sweeping, lavishly mounted, and wildly ambitious, Mona Fastvold’s music-filled fever dream charts the rise of Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shakers, in extraordinary fashion. Taking us from 18th-century Manchester onto a creaking ship, and then to the New World, as our heroine leads her people toward a more promising future, it’s a hallucinatory vortex of eerie folk songs and impassioned dancing. Yes, not all of it works, but the same is true of the auteur’s last film, The Brutalist, which she co-wrote with her partner, and that film’s director, Brady Corbet. It’s ironic, then, that that release—a fictional biopic about a Great Man™ and helmed by one—secured 10 Oscar nominations and won three statuettes (for best cinematography, best original score, and best actor for Adrien Brody). As for this one, which is made by a woman and about a real-life woman who achieved remarkable things? Zilch, naturally.
In my book, it deserved to be on a 10-strong best picture shortlist, but there are many more glaring omissions: for instance, Amanda Seyfried is simply virtuosic in the lead role, committing body and soul, and fully deserved to be in the best actress shortlist. Then there are the exquisite costumes, the precise production design, and the goosebump-inducing score by Daniel Blumberg, not to mention Fastvold’s wizardry in weaving all of these strands together to create a grand period piece on a modest budget. When male directors take big swings like this, they’re lauded—when women do, they are, all too often, ignored.
How to watch: Buy on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Left-Handed Girl
Last year’s best director Oscar recipient, Anora’s Sean Baker, is a co-writer on this intimate family drama from Shih-Ching Tsou, which marks her solo directorial debut. (She’s served as his longtime producer on everything from Tangerine and The Florida Project to Red Rocket.) It’s the tender tale of a trio of women—a strung-out single mother (Janel Tsai), her rebellious twenty-something daughter (Shih Yuan Ma), and her cheeky five-year-old sister (Nina Ye)—who relocate from the countryside to bustling Taipei to set up a noodle stand at a jam-packed night market. Each is tormented by their own private demons, as they do everything they can to stay afloat. Submitted by Taiwan as the country’s best international film contender, it made the Academy’s shortlist of 15 releases in that field, but ultimately failed to clinch a nomination. That’s no reason to sleep on it, though—this is a devastating, heartwarming, and totally transportive portrait of female resistance, resilience, and solidarity.