Upon the news of SUFFRAGETTE kicking off this year’s London Film Festival (LFF), a new trailer for the first feature film to tell the story of women’s fight for the vote has been released.
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 cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff and Brendan Gleeson.
The trailer for the film is rather gritty as viewers can see 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.
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.
SUFFRAGETTE will have its world premiere in London on October 7th, at the beginning of the 59th London film festival, before opening nationwide in the UK on October 30th.
