Critics regularly use the term ‘provocateur’ and its cognates – rabble-rouser, incendiary, enfant terrible, mischief-maker – to describe directors working in narrative art cinema. Most individuals who attract this term are men. Luis Buñuel, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gaspar Noé, Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke, to list some of the more commonly cited names, far outnumber the women whom critics define in terms of their challenging, divisive auteurism. On one hand, this is not unexpected. Given that the discourses of film criticism ascribe the title of auteur far less frequently to women than to men, it makes sense that fewer women are labelled provocative auteurs.

On the other hand, it is, in fact, surprising. Women have a long and rich history of provocative art practice, and there are abundant examples of controversial work by women throughout the art world. In literature, the works of Valerie Solanas, Kathy Acker and Monique Wittig challenge readers with their incendiary, frank and radical writing. In the visual arts, Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman, Carolee Schneemann and Tracey Emin all caused memorable stirs with their installation work and photography. Popular music has produced a heterogeneous variety of female provocateurs. A particularly striking and consequential example occurred in 2012, when Russian authorities arrested members of the punk group Pussy Riot and charged them with hooliganism following a performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Women artists are thus no strangers to controversy. It follows that women should be making provocative art films as well, and, indeed, auteurs from Věra Chytilová to Jennifer Kent, Liliana Cavani to Lucile Hadžihalilović, have produced transgressive narrative features that divide audiences and shock critics. Yet despite these clear examples of women who confront and challenge their recipients, the methods and meanings of women’s filmic provocation has yet to be directly addressed.

Provocative auteurs have long been a feature of art cinema, beginning with the early avant-garde works by Luis Buñuel An Andalusian Dog (Un chien andalou, 1929) and The Golden Age (L’Âge d’Or, 1930), extending to the European art films of the 1970s and 1980s such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1975) and Andrzej Żuławski’s On the Silver Globe (Na srebrnym globie, 1988) to contemporary controversial films like Sandra Wollner’s The Trouble with Being Born (2020).