In need of a good dose of girl power movies? We got you!
For a very long time, the gap between movies with male and female leads was huge. Although there still is a significant difference, nowadays we can see more female protagonists on the silver screen. Whether it’s animation or live action, we see an increasing number of works with plots where girls lead the way and portrait real women, not just the stereotypical ones we were used to.
Check here 7 movies with female protagonists that deserve more recognition!
- The Breadwinner (2017)
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Parvana and her family live in Afghanistan. The fact that her family is formed by three women (herself, her mother and sister) and two men (her father and little brother), means they depend 100% on the patriarch´s work. But when the only man capable of maintaining the house is taken by the Taliban, the only solution is for Parvana to fake being a boy to sustain her family.
- And They Say I Am The Crazy One (2019)
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Inspired by the book with the same title and written by Tati Bernardes, this adaptation tells the story of Dani, a talented writer. She felt disconnected from the world since she was a kid, until it came to a point she started having panic attacks. Now she is on a journey to find herself again. If you are looking for a representation of mental illnesses, you just found it!
- The Princess and the Frog (2009)
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Tiana is the most hardworking person in New Orleans, she works day and night in order to achieve her dad´s dream: having her own restaurant. Mistaken by a princess, she was asked to kiss a prince under a spell that transformed him into a frog, and since she wasn´t royalty, it backfired. Now both of them are frogs and need to find a way to become humans again. Tiana was the first black Disney princess and the movie was the last animation in 2D by Walt Disney Animation Studio.
- The Second Mother (2015)
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In São Paulo, Val works as a housekeeper and nanny so she could send money to her daughter, Jéssica, who lives in their hometown in the Northeast of Brazil. Ten years later, Jéssica moves with Val to her bosses’ home, and without even noticing, changes the whole class system in the house and defies barriers. The relationships between mother-daughter and boss-employee are so accurate that it doesn’t even seem like fiction.
- Still Alice (2015)
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The adaptation of the book with the same name, written by Lisa Genova, brings us the story of Alice Howland, a famous linguistics teacher. After showing some signs of memory loss, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, shocking the whole family. Drifting away from her husband and getting closer to her daughter every day that passes by, Alice deals with the disease until the very end.
- Anastasia (1997)
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After Rasputin’s curse, almost all of the royal family dies in the revolution, lasting only Anastasia, the youngest princess, and the grand-duchess, her grandmother. Separated when she was just a kid and with a case of amnesia, now with 18 years old she tries to reconnect with her past. So goes on a journey with Dimitri and Vlad, to see if there is any chance that she could be the grand-duchess granddaughter (spoiler: she is).
- Queen of Katwe (2016)
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Based on a true story, we are presented to Phiona, a 10 year old girl who lives in Katwe, Uganda. Her routine was basically taking care of her younger brother and helping her mom on the market, until the day, at a missionary program, that she met Robert. He teaches chess to her, and Phiona gets fascinated. Under his guidance, she became a top player.
All of these movies brings woman with different personalities, ages and backgrounds. If they exited the fictional world, they wouldn’t even knew each other. And that’s what makes them similar to us. Thankfully, more movies filled with female protagonists are being released nowadays, and the tendency is for this list only to grow.
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The article above was edited by Nicole Leslie.
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