Suffragette, the first feature film to tell the story of women’s fight for the vote, will kick off this year’s London film festival (LFF). Starring Carey Mulligan, the film tells the story of the working-class British women who, inspired by the suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, took their fight for enfranchisement to the male establishment in Westminster.
Mulligan plays Maud, a housewife who defies her husband (Ben Whishaw) and risks losing custody of her children in the struggle for universal suffrage. Meryl Streep plays Pankhurst, the co-founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who undertook hunger strikes and advocated property destruction as a means of protest.
The trailer for the film suggests a gritty drama that doesn’t shy away from the violent aspects of the movement’s struggle. There are shots of mounted police striking protesters in the face and Mulligan as Maud planting a bomb in a post box and fleeing before it explodes. “We’re half the human race,” Maud tells the inspector tasked with quelling the protest. “You can’t stop us all.”
Mulligan has been a vocal proponent of equality in the film industry, which she has called “massively sexist”. “The mere fact that it’s taken 100 years for this story to be told is hugely revealing,” Mulligan told Time Out magazine in April. “This is the story of equal rights in Britain. It took years of struggle and women being tortured, abused and persecuted, and it’s never been put on screen. It’s such a reflection of our film industry that that story hasn’t been told yet.”
The film is directed by Sarah Gavron, who reunites with Abi Morgan, the screenwriter on her adaptation of Monica Ali’s Booker-shortlisted novel Brick Lane. Gavron was the first film-maker working on a commercial project to receive permission to film inside the Houses of Parliament. The cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff and Brendan Gleeson.
“Suffragette is an urgent and compelling film – made by British women, about British women who changed the course of history,” said LFF director Clare Stewart. “It is, quite simply, a film that everyone must see.”
Suffragette will have its world premiere in London on 7 October, at the beginning of the 59th London film festival, before opening nationwide in the UK on 30 October.
