Oxford to screen Gentle, Angry Women film this weekend

Gentle, Angry Women, directed by Barbara Santi, tells the story of three young women retracing the historic march to Greenham Common – 40 years after the first Women’s Peace Protests.

It will be screened at The Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford on Sunday, May 24, at 5pm.

The documentary is the latest release from award-winning Cornish production company Awen Productions and is part of the film’s 2026 UK tour, with stops including Gloucester, Cardiff, Bristol, Reading, and Cornwall.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with peace activists Marie Walsh, Nuala Young, and Di McDonald.

The event is being held to mark International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament and will celebrate women’s global leadership in advocating for peace and disarmament.

Barbara Santi, director of Gentle, Angry Women, said: “I belong to the generation that should have inherited and passed on these stories, yet failed to do so.

“I’m working to repair that broken chain of women’s collective memory.

“Every woman deserves to know her own history – yet an entire generation has been robbed of the knowledge that thousands of women once lived for years in makeshift camps, facing arrest and ridicule to prevent nuclear war.”

Ms Santi said the film’s message is especially timely in light of current global events.

She said: “In a time when young people are grappling with climate crisis, global conflicts, and technological isolation, they need to see how previous generations of ‘gentle, angry women’ faced seemingly impossible odds and refused to give up.”

The Greenham Common protest lasted 19 years and became one of the largest women’s movements in British history, although many – including the film’s protagonists – were unaware of it.

The documentary follows 19-year-old Evie from Cornwall, and her friends Xanthe, 17, and Poppy, 16, on a 110-mile march to Greenham Common to rediscover its legacy.

Along their journey, the trio meet women who spent years living at the peace camp and share intergenerational conversations on activism and the state of the world today.

The young women highlight contemporary issues, including climate change, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, and animal activism.

She said: “The film champions small acts of defiance and community building as powerful forms of resistance.”

Audience members have described the film as ‘a really humbling story of collective women’s activism’ and ‘powerful, poetic, and unapologetically bold’.

Tickets and more information are available at the Folklife Films website.