The Source

In a mountain village in North Africa, fetching water is women's work: the spring is far, the path is steep, and pregnant women lose their pregnancies on it. So the women decide on a strike, refusing their husbands until the men bring the water to the village. Radu Mihăileanu takes the device from Lysistrata but grounds it entirely in local terms; the real subject is not water but the first moment these women make a decision together. The balance is careful, with the village neither idealised nor collectively condemned, and both the resistance and the support coming from inside it. Leïla Bekhti plays the educated outsider who married in. It competed at Cannes in 2011. Who it is for: viewers who like films about solidarity and gender that keep their humour. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a harder treatment given the subject.