An Army of Women review – shocking story of sex-assault survivors’ fight for justice

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Julie Lunde Lillesæter’s timely documentary tells the story of the courageous women whose cases of sexual assault and rape have gone unheard by the US judicial system In 2018, a historic lawsuit was brought against the US city of Austin, Travis County, the Austin Police Department, and the Travis County District Attorney’s Office. The plaintiffs were survivors of sexual assault, whose cases had gone unheard by the judicial system. Gripping and timely, Julie Lunde Lillesæter’s riveting documentary follows these courageous women as they fight for justice. The film lays bare the shocking details concerning how sex crimes were treated in the county. In one year, between July 2016 and June 2017, of more than 220 cases presented for prosecution, only one went to trial – and the victim in this instance was male. Testimony from the survivors reveal the harrowing extent to which officials turned a blind eye; even with scientific evidence such as DNA matches, the majority of criminal filings w...
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Stockholm Bloodbath review – like Game of Thrones scripted by Guy Ritchie

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Based on a real mass killing, this 16th-century tale of backstabbing and beheadings is a clunker with a laddish edge

‘A great deal of this actually happened,” reads the title card at the start of this action-packed historical epic. Possibly. But it’s unlikely that anyone actually said these words. Like an episode of Game of Thrones scripted by Guy Ritchie, there is a laddish finesse to the dialogue in this 16th-century tale of backstabbing and beheadings. “That sounds like a load of bollocks,” splutters the Danish king Christian II to an adviser in one scene. The actors are mostly Danes and Swedes speaking lines in English, plus a few Brits with a slight Scandi tinge to their accents.

The film is based on real events: the mass killing of Swedish nobles in 1520, ordered by Danish king Christian II (Claes Bang). The script gives history a revisionist twist or two: namely by adding a pair of aristocratic Swedish sisters, beautiful Anne (Sophie Cookson) and skilled hunter Freja (Alba August). The film opens with a massacre at Anne’s wedding perpetrated by King Christian’s attack dogs. The villains are all introduced with geezerish-gangster nicknames: there’s Didrik Slagheck (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) “AKA evilman”. Another is “guy with scar”.

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