Feminist Riposte (Riposte Feministe) Sat Matinee Nambour

Feminist Riposte film trailer HERE

Throughout the streets of France, words have begun to appear pasted onto the walls of buildings. The collages are the work of a new wave of French feminists who are passionate about getting their messages about male violence seen and heard.

Under mostly the cover of night,  equipped with buckets of glue and sheets of white paper bearing black painted letters, they reclaim public spaces and get their messages out there and this spirited documentary follows the members in action and listens to their thoughts and hopes for the future.

There are over 200 of these groups in France, with more spreading across London, New York and Mexico. In Feminist Riposte, directors Marie Perennès and Simon Depardon speak to  a handful of the people involved in 10 French cities  to get an understanding of why they do what they do.

In a series of locations around the country – Le Havre, Marseille, Paris, Brest, Montbrison and others – the filmmakers shadow the women as they poster walls and windows. Then they sit with the women and listen as they debate and share their own journeys. There are moments of comedy in the night time street sequences – spilled glue, precarious wheelie bin balancing – and incidents in which there’s a sense of real and immediate danger.

The messages tend to be pithy and to the point: . “Even my dog understands when I tell him no” others less so “Patriarchy is violent. Its fall will be too”

But while the concept of violence as a form of protest is debated, what seems to be a unifying theme is the empowerment which results from the act of coming together and staking a claim on the spaces where generations of men have felt free from critcism.

"This is engaged, curious filmmaking which finds humour as well as anger; which balances rhetoric with moments of joyous, unifying energy." Wendy Ide  Screen Daily