Manchester 1903. Under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, English women witness the birth of the movement for universal suffrage as they were excluded from voting along with prisoners, the mentally ill, and men from the lower classes.

In 1906 the movement's headquarters were moved to London, and in the eight years that followed, the struggle was public and fierce.

London 1902. Women have no rights other than the duty to work in the factory at least 13 hours a day from the time they are children and to be harassed by their masters, with no rights over their children.

Here is the story of Maud Watts, married with one child.

She works in a damp and dangerous laundry and to make a delivery she witnesses a violent demonstration, during which the Suffragettes are smashing store windows; here she meets her colleague Violet who has been raped and beaten by her husband for years.

Initially Maud is reticent to join the struggle but soon meets Edith, a pharmacist who with her husband runs a secret Suffragette base, and upper-middle-class activist Alice who invites the laundry women to Parliament to bear witness to their working conditions; she thus begins to feel strongly involved in the cause.

During the protests, the women are charged, beaten, and arrested. It also happens to Maud to find herself in jail, and once out she finds her husband Sonny ready to throw her out of the house and make a tragic decision with respect to her son over which Maud has no right to exercise any opposition.

Meanwhile, the woman is under constant surveillance by Inspector Steed, the Metropolitan Police officer in charge of the secret surveillance operation.

Maud will find herself homeless, jobless and awaiting trial.

The term Suffragette was coined in a derisive sense by the British press but activists appropriated it to draw attention to their struggle for equality.

Interestingly, the film depicts the complex reactions of men at the time: the concept of gender equality was foreign to the majority's way of thinking, and having a wife who was part of the movement was a source of shame; however, the film succeeds in portraying male figures, sympathizers with the movement, who played a key role in organizing the cause.

The documentation portrayed highlights how far from public knowledge the movement was and the extent of its existential reach that drove the Suffragettes to take violent action and suffer the brutality of police reaction in the form of beatings or force-feeding.

They were often satirically portrayed as ugly curmudgeons, condemned as hysterical females, responsible for deliberately and physically distorting the face and form of the ideal, pure and feminine mother-woman, while the outbreak of World War I saw them devoted to supporting the war effort.

The film seems to portray something unprecedented and untold. Even the history books trace brief and sketchy hints of it.

Many of the female figures are portrayals of real women who existed, such as that of Emily, the woman fatally wounded by King George V's horse during the Epsom derby, allegedly during a desperate attempt to attract press attention with the Suffragette flag.

Whatever the motivation may have been, as is often the case, it takes a martyr to focus public attention.

The colors of the film also highlight the contrasts between purple white and green, the shades of movement and the cold, grayish non-colors determined by the workplaces, prisons and police stations.

A film with a strong emotional charge especially for those who want to have, fight for and win a voice, who are interested in justice and respect for human rights.

A dramatic account of how important it is to recover the meaning of women's language to make people aware that discrimination and sexism still exist to a greater or lesser extent depending on social, political and geographical contexts.

26-Jun-2023 by Beatrice