Times and Winds (2006)

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, directed by Iranian filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour, follows a lonesome vampire, known only by the name of “The Girl”, as she stalks and preys upon men who exploit and take advantage of women in the fictional town of Bad City, Iran.

The town, riddled with drugs and prostitution, is full of men who abuse their power over women. Throughout the film, The Girl seeks out these men and kills them as a means of protecting the women of Bad City, namely Atti, a prostitute who is repeatedly taken advantage of by the men of Bad City. The Girl’s life takes a dramatic shift, however, when she meets Arash, a local boy and the son of a junkie that The Girl eventually takes as one of her victims. Arash, unlike the other men in Bad City, gains the trust and respect of The Girl, and the two slowly fall for one another, though Arash remains oblivious to her being a vampire. Through this occasionally horrific and occasionally romantic story, Amirpour sparks an important discussion on the treatment and objectification of women by men, particularly within Iran.

Dressed in a chador for the majority of the film, The Girl uses her unassuming nature and perceived weakness as an asset to her. Her first victim in the film is a drug dealer and pimp, Saeed, who starts off the movie by pressuring and taking advantage of Atti. After getting him alone, The Girl gains Saeed’s trust before attacking him by biting off his finger and proceeding to drink his blood until he is dead. A pattern like this continues throughout the film, both before and after The Girl meets Arash. Even men who have not harmed women—such as a young boy that The Girl warns against being bad, saying she will come for him one day if he is—are not exempt from The Girl’s vengeance.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Nightis, by all appearances, a movie meant to be about women reclaiming power, and an analysis of the imbalances between men and women and the gendered violence that women often face. It’s impossible to watch the film without a feminist lens, because the plot in and of itself is inherently feminist in the sense that the story relies on women taking a stand against a patriarchal system.