Before It Kills Us All (2020) dir. Margaret Lazarus

Lazarus has dedicated her career to combining documentary filmmaking and political activism, making films that explore a wide range of social justice and womens issues. Her short film Defending Our Lives, a documentary made with her partner Renner Wunderlich, about women incarcerated for killing their abusers, won an Academy Award in 1994. Divided into three sections, Before It Kills Us All begins with a gruesome chronicle of violencefrom the horrors of war to police violence against Black and Brown bodies to the willful destruction of our planet and its wildlifeall wrought by the hands of men. The middle section offers a counterpoint in the form of historical footage of womens resistance including protesting suffragettes, women in Liberia who demonstrated to end the countrys civil wars, a Womens March on Washington, and even a section from the subversive 1968 film The Girls by Mai Zetterling.