Focus Features will distribute Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette, a history of the women’s suffrage movement from (I gather) roughly ’03, which is when Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep) founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, to the start of World War I in 1917. The drama, which has the aura of another Selma (and that doesn’t imply excitement on my part), will open sometime in the fall (a likely Venice/Telluride debut) and be part of the award-season chatter, I’m sure. When peaceful protests for women’s right to vote proved fruitless, certain WSU activists “became known for physical confrontations (smashed windows, assaulting police officers) and later arson,” says the Wiki page. The story of Carey Mulligan‘s Maud, a working-class woman involved in the militancy, “is as gripping and visceral as any thriller, [and] also heartbreaking and inspirational,” says the boilerplate description. Question: Why is Garvon standing in the second row and off to the left? The movie is her baby. She should be sitting dead-center between Streep and Mulligan.

(l. to. r.): Sufragette director Sarah Gavron, Helen Pankhurst (great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst), Laura Pankhurst (great-great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst), Alison Owen (producer); front row (L-R): Abi Morgan (screenwriter), Anne-Marie Duff (“Violette Cambridge”), Meryl Streep (“Emmeline Pankhurst”), Carey Mulligan (“Maud”), Helena Bonham Carter (“Edith New”), Faye Ward (producer).