Real wonder women

The ongoing China Women's Film Festival is showing 45 foreign and Chinese films, including Lipstick Under My Burkha from India, Killer Smile from China and Martha & Niki from Sweden. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The film focuses on her hometown, Taiyuan in the country's northern Shanxi province, where she spent her growing up years but could no longer recognize upon revisiting it in 2014.

All films in the Chinese repertoire tell stories of ordinary people－some are set in urbanizing eastern towns such as Yiwu, a world manufacturing hub of small commodity, Heze and Pingdu, while others are about personal losses, the mainland's fast-changing social landscape and mother-child bond.

Foreign entries in the festival include the documentary Tchindas, which is about a transgender person from Cape Verde, an island country in West Africa. She came out in the local media in 1998.

The section on female innovators is showing four films from the US and Switzerland. The festival's curators mention in a brochure the US, China, Japan and India as countries that are offering grants to women in science and technology, and say the section spotlights the women who have enjoyed great success in the field despite the pushback they received in the process of attaining it.

The fifth China Women's Film Festival ends on Sunday.

Contact the writer at satarupa@chinadaily.com.cn