Jennifer Merin

New York

Film Journalist and Critic at Freelance

Film Journalist/Critic @ Cinema Citizen Blog; wEnews; Rio Times. Pres @ Alliance of Women Film Journalists @AWFJ.org; Co-Chair CriticsChoiceDocAwards @ BFCA.

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Articles

MOVIE OF THE WEEK June 6, 2025: THE TUNDRA WITHIN ME

1 week ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × Tradition goes head to head with progress — or at least inevitable change — in Norwegian writer/director Sara Margrethe Oskal’s intimate debut feature The Tundra Within Me. As it follows a feminist artist (Risten Anine Kvernmo Gaup) who returns to her remote far-north Sami homeland with her young son after many years in the city, the film examines the ways in which dearly held cultural traditions can be both empowering and stifling.
THE TUNDRA WITHIN ME - Review by Jennifer Merin

1 week ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × Norwegian writer/director Sara Margrethe Oskal’s debut feature, The Tundra Within Me, is a tender love story set in Sápmi, the Northern Scandinavia region occupied by the Sámi (aka Lapps), an indigenous people who’ve struggled for centuries to sustain their cultural independence and traditional way of life as reindeer herders.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 30, 2025: Team MOTW’S Summer Watch List

1 week ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × If you’re looking forward to some summer cinema chilling with some hot movies, here’s AWFJ’s list of ten must see femme-directed femme-centric films for your June-July-August viewing pleasure. Each of the films on this watch list was featured on AWFJ.org as one of our previous 2025 Movies of the Week.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 23, 2025: CHAMBERMAID

3 weeks ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × World war looms on the horizon, but it’s conflict on the domestic front that ultimately takes center stage in director/co-writer Mariana Cengel-Solcanská’s early-1900s-set drama Chambermaid. Like a grittier take on Downton Abbey, the film explores tensions related to both class and desire as it tells the often heartbreaking story of a Slovak teenager (Dana Droppová) navigating her position while working as a maid in a wealthy Prague household.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 16, 2025: JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE

4 weeks ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × It is a truth universally acknowledged that any story with ties to the witty, wistful brand of romance associated with author Jane Austen must be in want of a swoon-ready audience.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 9, 2025: LILLY

1 month ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × If the more unpleasant aspects of late-stage capitalism have you seeing red these days, Lilly isn’t likely to change your mind on that front. But Rachel Feldman‘s earnest biopic about the extremely determined Lilly Ledbetter (Patricia Clarkson), who fought long and hard in the name of ensuring equal pay for women, is a timely, meaningful reminder that one person truly can help to make a real difference when faced with injustice and discrimination.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 2, 2025: WORDS OF WAR

1 month ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × Part biopic, part history lesson, and all cautionary tale, Words of War — director James Strong’s earnest drama about fearless Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) — is alarmingly timely in the current political climate.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK April 25, 2024: PANGOLIN: KULU’S JOURNEY

1 month ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × Imagine a little anteater covered in armored scales that look a bit like artichoke leaves, running around on its hind feet looking for tasty ants to slurp with its prehensile tongue, only to curl up like a pill bug when it encounters a threat, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what a pangolin looks like.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK April 18, 2025: THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE

1 month ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × Catherine Deneuve shines as iconic French First Lady Bernadette Chirac in director Léa Domenach’s sly dramedy The President’s Wife. Based in fact but taking plenty of liberties to tell the story of the woman who stoically stood by the side of France’s President Jacques Chirac no matter what blunders or missteps he made, it depicts Madame Bernadette as a canny, crafty strategist who was ultimately far more politically savvy than her notorious husband.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK April 11, 2025: THE UGLY STEPSISTER

2 months ago | awfj.org | Jennifer Merin

0 Flares 0 Flares × The Brothers Grimm by way of the ill-advised early-2000s Fox extreme-makeover show The Swan, Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s stylish feature debut The Ugly Stepsister is a dark but thought-provoking retelling of the classic Cinderella fairy tale.