The Dryden will screen Les gardiennes (The Guardians, Xavier Beauvois, France 2017, 135 min., DCP, French w/subtitles).

After the outbreak of World War I, the women of the Paridier farm in provincial France must protect the homestead in the absence of their husbands, sons, and employees. Family matriarch Hortense (Nathalie Baye) reluctantly brings on a hardscrabble orphan, Francine (Iris Bry), to assist her daughter Solange (Laura Smet) and sustain the farm. New tools allow the women to triumph over the land, but old jealousies persist, especially when the men return from the front. Described by Cinema Scope as a work that treats us "with flashes of van Gogh—inspired beauty," The Guardians is truly a marvel of a film: both a rough-hewn tribute to a generation of women who persisted, and a sharp indictment of war that never actually shows any images of war.

[source: George Eastman Museum calendar, 2018-Jun-11]