Film

Suffragette

Name: Suffragette
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2015
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, Meryl Streep

Period drama

A bruising portrait of the British suffragette movement's militant wing. Carey Mulligan plays a laundry worker radicalised into direct action—property damage, arson, assault. The film treats these women as serious revolutionaries with everything to lose, not symbols. It's angry, urgent, and made for people who want their history unflinching.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a historical drama that takes its politics seriously and puts them into the bodies, wages and bruised routines of ordinary working women, closer in spirit to a tense procedural than a costume pageant.

Skip it if you come to period films for lush sets and easy pleasure, since this one is grey, cramped and often grim, and its loudest moments are more bruising than rousing.

What it asks of you: Around ninety minutes of steady, sober attention, with little comic relief; it lingers on faces and small domestic moments rather than racing from set piece to set piece.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Hidden Figures2016

Three brilliant Black women engineers fighting NASA bureaucracy and racism to put America in space. It shares Suffragette's focus on how systemic exclusion forces people into ingenious, determined resistance.

But Leaner and less formally ambitious than Suffragette. Some find its tone too optimistic for the ugliness of its subject matter.

Four Rooms1995

Meryl Streep (Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette) plays a ruthless union organiser in 1930s New York. A direct ancestor of that film's militant energy, and a showcase for Streep's command of working-class fury.

But Sixty years old now and it shows. The visual language is dated, and Streep's screen time is shorter than you'd want.

Darkest Hour2017

Another 2015-era historical drama with Brendan Gleeson (Suffragette's antagonist). Focuses on backroom power, impossible choices, and the men who thought they ran everything. Gorgeous cinematography and Gary Oldman at full command.

But Churchill feels safer, more comfortable. It doesn't challenge the audience the way Suffragette's moral ambiguity does.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Suffragette

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Dangerous Woman1993

Both trace the radical act of a woman refusing to accept the limits men have drawn for her. Suffragette shows it as collective power; this shows it stripped to one person against the world.

Barbara Streisand as a woman institutionalised for challenging men's authority, fighting her way back to autonomy. It's a solo excavation of the same fury that Suffragette distributes across a movement—intimate, bruising, and rarely seen.

But Streisand has aged out of her leading-lady roles in the public mind. The film is small, unglamorous, and doesn't advertise itself as important.

The Killing2011

A Danish crime series about systems of power grinding individual people to dust. Like Suffragette, it finds moral urgency in the grinding details of institutional resistance and personal cost.

But Runs four seasons; you're committing serious time. The bleak Scandinavian tone makes Suffragette look almost hopeful.

Pride2014

A joy. Working-class Welsh miners and London queer activists form an alliance in the 1980s. Same era-crossing radical solidarity as Suffragette, but warmer and funny without losing its spine.

But Lighter in tone and genre than you might expect from a historical drama. Some find that a relief; others want more weight.

Mulholland Drive2001

Not what you're expecting. Naomi Watts gives one of cinema's greatest performances as an actress colliding with power, fakeness, and her own helplessness. Technically about Hollywood, spiritually about systems that crush women.

But Deliberately fragmented and dreamlike. If you want clarity and narrative momentum, this will frustrate you badly.

The Crown2016

British power, British women, British institutional cruelty. You'll see the apparatus that Suffragette's women were fighting against fully articulated—the machine they were up against.

But Ten hours for context. And the show privileges the royal perspective, which is almost the inverse of what Suffragette does.

Made in Dagenham2010

Sally Hawkins leads women factory workers in the 1960s Ford pay strike. Same DNA as Suffragette: ordinary people discovering collective power through direct action, and what it costs them personally.

But Safer and more conventionally uplifting than Suffragette. The film wants you to feel good by the end.

The Motorcycle Diaries2004

Gael García Bernal as young Che Guevara, witnessing poverty across South America and being radicalised. It captures the moment someone moves from sympathy to action—the same transformation Mulligan's character undergoes.

But Three-hour meditative road film, not an action drama. Some find it slow; others find it essential.

Le Corbeau1943

Both show the State's systematic crushing of dissent through terror and surveillance. Suffragette gives you the resistance; this gives you the machinery working perfectly.

A French film made during Nazi occupation about anonymous letters destroying a small town's trust. Surveillance, paranoia, the State's reach into intimate life. Shot in crisp black-and-white and oddly thrilling.

But It's a wartime film from France, which carries its own historical weight. The pacing is glacial by modern standards.