What Does a Sympathetic Portrayal of Sexual Assault on Screen Look Like?
As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to an end, I’d like to urge viewers and filmmakers to take a long and hard look at how rape is portrayed on screen.

Anna is a surgeon and, like her husband Gunnar, works at the hospital in a small town in the Mecklenburg Lake District. They have built a good life here with their son. Anna is torn out of her usual routine when a child suddenly suffers an allergic shock after a routine operation, which was triggered by an antibiotic that Anna had not been given. A medical mystery for Anna until she finds out that the clinic has a massive hygiene problem. The more unpleasant truths Anna uncovers, the more hostile she becomes. Anna is faced with decisions of conscience that could bring down everything she has built up so far.
As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to an end, I’d like to urge viewers and filmmakers to take a long and hard look at how rape is portrayed on screen.
Crazy World gives fans of Wakaliwood movies what they want by playing up the comedy and action just like their movies before.
Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are a delight to watch evolve, sometimes devolve, then evolve again.
Years before Mexican director, Alfonso Cuaron, was winning Academy Awards for movies like Gravity (2013) and Roma(2018), he directed a small, intimate film about two best friends who decide to embark on an improvised road trip to spend time with an older, attractive woman who miraculously agrees to go with them. Y tu Mamá También is a deep journey into the raw sexuality and friendship of the young protagonists, as well as a subtle social and political commentary on Mexico at the time.
In Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986), we follow the love life of powerful female protagonist Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) and explore the relationship dynamics she has with her partners. She sees three men simultaneously: Greer Childs, (John Canada Terrell) Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee), and Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks). Though an 80’s film, She’s Gotta Have It is surprisingly progressive with its themes of female sexuality, although at some points in the film it is handled clumsily. Overall Nola is an incredibly compelling character especially for modern women, as we as a society acknowledge female sensuality more and more without the negative stigma.
What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?