More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Traveling this month? Keep your eyes peeled. For Women’s History Month, Ms. magazine is hitting the shelves at Hudson News airport bookstores across the country.
If you spot Ms. at Hudson News, snap a photo and tag @msmagazine on social media—we’d love to see it. Consider grabbing a copy for your flight; every purchase helps sustain our feminist journalism.
Women are often stereotyped as overly talkative—gossiping, ‘blabbing’ or labeled ‘chatty Cathys.’ Archie Bunker in the television series All in the Family often tells his wife Edith to “stifle yourself” to stop her talking. Recently, one critic argued that “the bride” (played by Jessie Buckley) in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new movie of the same name, talks too much.
What makes Gyllenhaal’s reinvention of James Whale’s 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein story so compelling is precisely because this fabricated lady has her own voice and uses it loudly and in a rage. We’re glad she speaks.
Following the illegal strikes of war against Iran, the White House transitioned from traditional diplomacy to digital propaganda, releasing a series of highly stylized videos that blurred the lines between state-sanctioned violence and Hollywood entertainment. By splicing real military strikes with iconic imagery from films like Gladiator and John Wick, the administration did more than just trivialize the human cost of an illegal war; it reanimated an antiquated patriarchal script that equates manhood with domination.
Beyond the troubling optics of movie tropes and videogame aesthetics lies a deeper systemic framework. As we navigate the twenty-first century, the real challenge facing American society is not the defeat of “enemies” abroad, but the transformation of manhood at home. To build a more humane world, we must move beyond the spectacle and embrace a courage defined by care, empathy and the bravery to reject violence, even when our own government insists that violence is what makes a man.
Tracii’s day begins early—before dawn. She arrives at work, turns on the lights and thoroughly searches the building for intruders. Then she checks outside, where it’s still dark, making sure no one is hiding in the woods or behind a dumpster.
Tracii is the head of security at an abortion clinic in Atlanta, and is also the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary short, The Devil Is Busy. Directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir, the film follows Tracii over the course of a long, stressful day at the clinic, as she works tirelessly to ensure not just the safety but the comfort of the women seeking care. (Neither her last name, nor the name of the clinic, gets mentioned in the film.)
Available to stream on HBO Max, The Devil Is Busy is a compelling portrait of a deeply compassionate woman on the frontlines of the abortion war. It packs a lot into 31 minutes, exploring not just the precarious status of abortion care post-Roe v. Wade, but also the fraught intersection of race, religion and women’s health.
The film arrives just as advocates mark Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, observed each year on March 10. The date honors Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider murdered by a white supremacist anti-abortion extremist in 1993. Since 1996, supporters have used the day to recognize the courage and compassion of abortion providers—people like Tracii—whose work continues despite harassment, threats and political attacks.
Winner of Sundance’s Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category, as well as the Directing Award for filmmakers Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes, One in a Million lives up to its title. It homes in with a laser focus on the experiences of Israa, a Syrian girl whose family undertakes the perilous migration to Germany after the start of the Syrian civil war.
When the filmmakers first meet Israa in 2015, she is an inquisitive 11-year-old selling cigarettes on the street in Turkey while her family waits for the chance to cross the Mediterranean. The journey that follows—overcrowded rafts, long treks across multiple borders and nights spent sleeping on the street—contains harrowing moments, but it ultimately occupies only a sliver of the film’s larger story.
Once the family arrives in Germany, where the filmmakers check in with them over the next nine years, One in a Million reveals a far more complicated and intimate portrait of migration and acculturation.
As Israa grows from child to teenager to young adult, she navigates questions of identity, freedom and belonging, while her mother Nisreen becomes increasingly confident and independent in a country that offers opportunities she was denied in Syria. The result is a quietly riveting portrait of family life in transition, showing how the experience of displacement continues to reshape relationships, expectations and the possibilities of who each person might become.
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)
For adults who’ve conveniently blocked out memories of their own teenage angst, director Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry may bring all those feelings roaring back—but it’ll also urge you to have a little empathy for the younger version of yourself.
A New Zealand entry in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic competition, the film is a sensitive, insightful portrayal of how teenagers struggle to sort out their own mixed motivations while shuttling constantly between big adult feelings and childlike urges.
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)
The Luann Dummer Center for Women at the University of St. Thomas will host a Women’s History Month event on Thursday, March 5, featuring a moderated conversation between Elaine Welteroth, former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, and Dr. Janell Hobson, writer and contributing editor at Ms. magazine.
The event, titled “Ms. Magazine to Teen Vogue: Essential Feminist Journalism,” will explore the long history and present necessity of feminist voices in an evolving media landscape. The conversation will be moderated by Nina Moini of Minnesota Public Radio and will include an open audience Q&A.
Each month, Ms. provides readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
Wishing you a powerful, inspired and liberatory Women’s History Month!
Check out this month’s list of 24 books.
In the remote mountains of Montenegro, a small community of herders tend their sheep and cattle, making cheese, harvesting wool, and maintaining traditions that have persisted for generations. But they also must passionately defend their rural life against the incursions of NATO, which wants to use their land as a military training ground because of its isolation and rugged terrain. A documentary premiering at Sundance, To Hold a Mountain follows the leader of the protest movement, a staunchly loving and protective woman named Gara, and her young charge, Nada.
The documentary film won this year’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for documentary film at Sundance. By remaining focused with meditative intensity on the quiet day-to-day of its subjects, the film presents an argument both deeply affecting and more effective than if its message were emblazoned across every frame. As the festival jury aptly put it, To Hold a Mountain, directed by Bijana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, represents “the truest example of the power of cinema to make the personal political.”
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)
Extra Geography, the United Kingdom’s entry in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance this year, is a funny, sweet and quirky coming-of-age story about two best friends in an all-girls English boarding school. Directed by Molly Manners and written by Miriam Battye, the film offers a wholly unique angle on a well-worn subgenre, reimagining the contours of youthful exuberance and teen ambition, as well as the conflicting feelings and confusing choices we make when we’re learning what it means to grow up.
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)