Happy International Women’s Day, March 8!

In adapting her own bestselling novel, writer-director Laetitia Colombani weaves together three stories of perseverance and hardship with gentility and empathy. In Nyamatabad, Northern India, Smita (Mia Maelzer) dreams of giving her daughter an education, but when prejudices against her family get in the way, she makes a bold plan to move from the North to the South, where they might be afforded slightly more opportunities. In Monopoli, Southern Italy, Giulia (Fotinì Peluso), is struggling to keep her family and their business afloat after her father suffers a terrible accident. And in Montreal, lawyer and divorced mother Sarah (Kim Raver) finds her personal and professional life rocked following a cancer diagnosis. The most beautiful aspect of The Braid is its ability to look at issues unique to women under very specific cultural and economic circumstances without feeling reductive. On a passing glance, some of the story elements might seem more pressing and important than others, but Colombani and her performers all find ways of ensuring the audience feels an equal amount of empathy for all three women. –The Gate