Seeing Allred

The documentary follows Gloria Allred, one of the best-known women's rights lawyers in the United States. She speaks about the rape and the losses in her own life, and the film then moves to the turning points of her career: equality cases, family law, same-sex marriage, damages suits. It was shot in the years when the Cosby case and the accusations against Trump had put her back at the centre of public attention. Allred is a divisive figure and the film does not skip that entirely. Critics object to her press-conference method, to trying cases in public before they reach a court, and to what they see as a pursuit of visibility; defenders answer that cases which would otherwise never be heard become visible only this way. Sophie Sartain builds the film from Allred's own point of view and gives the opposing case limited room. Her relationship with her daughter Lisa Bloom carries the personal line of the account.