What Goddesses Watch

Irish LGBTQ+ film festival curator, audio journalist, artist, poet, DJ and actor Caoimhe Lavelle joins film critic Soma Ghosh to discuss Taste of Mango and All We Imagine As Light, two films set in India, Sri Lanka, and British Suburbia, about female friendship, sex, male violence and love.

Comedian, journalist and poet Suchandrika Chakrabarti joins Soma Ghosh to explore why we like seeing women in space and at the edge-of-the-world in film and TV. We're watching Rebecca 'Dune' Fergusson anad Harriet Walter in the new Season 2 of Apple TV's Silo, extraordinary Swedish film Aniara - with its tender, existential queer love story - and the maternal side of the Alien films. Catch Suchandrika's live comedy show here: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/suchandrika-chakrabarti-doomscrolling

Writer, TED talker and Professor, Pragya Agarwal joins Soma Ghosh to talk about the "beautiful, sublime, heart-rending" Ama Gloria by Marie Amouchekeli and Apple's Presumed Innocent, directed by Anne Sewitsky and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga and Renate Reinsve. We discuss alternative mothering, the healing wisdom of a child's point of view and whether a female director can rescue the screen obsession with brutalising women.

Losing your daughter to ISIS or drink: this episode, film critic Soma Ghosh takes a closer look at the big ideas in Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughers and Emma Westenberg's Bleeding Love, starring Ewan McGregor and his daughter Clara. Let's think about destructive co-dependencies, the relationships between daughters and their mothers and fathers, and the truths families can't tell.

How Binonche is redefining the creative and sexual appetites of women over 40 in her roles today, including Pot Au Feu (The Taste of Things) and as Coco Chanel in The New Look.

Film critic Soma Ghosh probes a problmatic vein, in TV & film, of fake feminism that glamorises female trauma and MeToo abuses, while taking us through the Monia Chokri's zinging new comedy thriller, The Babysitter. Also touching on popular TV like The Undoing, The Morning Show and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ghosh asks, "Is it OK to joke about MeToo?"

Avant garde historical author Nell Stevens joins film critic Soma Ghosh to discuss queerness, polyamory and watery bodies in Clio Barnard's handsome adaptation of period drama The Essex Serpent, starring Claire Danes, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Squires.

Want emotional nuance and alternative film-making in your queer screen stories? Maybe even some moral ambiguity and irony? Soma Ghosh considers what kinds of stories and cinematography queer female audiences want. She reviews two new films from the BFI LGBTQ Flare festival, uplifting rock doc Sirens & the Argentinian, sympathetically moody teenage story Camilla Comes Out Tonight (available to stream on BFI Player).

As Sciamma's Petite Maman arrives for worldwide streaming on MUBI, on which it's also your last chance to stream a gem of feminist film history, The Heiresses, with Isabelle Huppert, critic Soma Ghosh discusses two films of female friendship. Both are set in rural isolation and tinged with Gothic mystery. This 'Strange Mothers' episode queries how we construct maternal instinct and the drive behind female bonding.

As a new season of her films shows at London's BFI Southbank, we take a look at Asta Neilsen, silent film star, starting with her first film in 1910. Bizarrely largely forgetten, she was so beloved that her picture was pinned up soldiers on both sides of WW1 and called simply 'die Asta' - the Asta - across the world. Soma Ghosh explains how her revelatory acting technique inspired Garbo and Apollinaire, pushed gender norms and redefined the sexuality of women on screen. Films discussed include The Abyss and Hamlet, in which Hamlet is a genderqueer prince assigned male sexuality...

As new film 'Cow' is in UK cinemas and comes to MUBI worldwide in February, acclaimed Belfast writer of working class lives Wendy Erskine joins film critic Soma Ghosh for a deep dive into the films of Andrea Arnold, one of the most accomplished female film makers in the world. We tackle questions like middle-class viewers watching working-class and vulnerable lives, sex in dangerous paradises, the role of dance in feminine self-expression and to what extent female abuse is inevitable in the worlds Arnold depicts.

Film critic Soma Ghosh presents two wintry films featuring reunions with old friends: new Lebanese film Memory Box, by Joana Hadjithomas and Kahlil Joreige and Microhabitat, by Korean director Jeon Go-Woon. Questions discussed include who owns our story, the value of memory and transactional motives in friendship.

Queer pop punk icons Ezra Furman and Ms. Mohammed join film critic Soma Ghosh. They disuss queer activist clubbing and feminist sexual fantasy in the ebulliantly anarchic documentary Rebel Dykes by Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams and the chaotic comedy F*cking with nobody by Hannaleena Hauru. If you believe we need more inclusive podcasts like this, please the Donate button to get early access, behind the scenes videos and booster feminist film education podcasts from £1.

Uncanny romance, racial passing and a suburban mob movie. Our wintry recommedations of 3 films to stream now, by, about and led by womxn, in Hungrarian, Finnish & English.

Our host, film critic Soma Ghosh dives into the history of the Bond girl, her problematic myth and how it's redeemed by the new James Bond film, starring Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch and Daniel Craig, No Time To Die. Please hit the Donate button on our landing page to help us make more Specials like this for you.

Film critic Soma Ghosh reviews Netflix's 'Britney vs. Spears'. In a 20 min bitesize podcast, we explore what really happens to American Sweethearts & how Britney's privileged plight highlights America's unequal treatment of women under the law.

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Iconic feminist activist Mona Eltahawy and Ethiopian-American Booker shortlisted author Maaza Mengiste join host Soma Ghosh to talk about SOUAD, directed by Ayten Amin and You Will Die at Twenty, directed by Amjad Abu Alala.

The team bring to life the colour and passion of these new stories from African Arab cinema and talk about sex, repression, pleasure palaces and social media.