25 must-see films playing at this year’s AFI Fest

All Good (“Alles ist Gut”)

What’s the story?: A young woman is tasked with working alongside her rapist, leading to a conflicting world of issues that end up sidelining her own emotions.

If you haven’t noticed, this year hasn’t been too kind to women and rape culture continues to be something we don’t explore with much nuance. In the world of foreign cinema, rape culture is defined differently, and numerous movies have attempted to look at how women rebuild their lives (or don’t) after an assault.

All Good won the first-feature filmmaker prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, with director Eva Trobisch being praised for creating an emotionally wrought story about rape and resilience. We don’t often see these stories told by women directors, with many stories that utilize rape and assault, like this year’s Revenge and the Isabelle Huppert-starring drama Elle, being male-dominated takes on the material which ends up doing more harm than good. Too often it’s hard for the whole thing not to feel exploitative, relishing women’s pain more than discussing it. Stories like these need, nay, demand to be told by women so on that basis alone, All Good deserves audiences’ attention. Expect this to be as troubling as it is complex.