The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause

Davina was 44 and felt like she was losing it - hot flushes, depression, mental fog. Now she tells her menopause story, busting midlife taboos from sex to hormone treatment.

A documentary about hot flashes, organ descent, bladder weakness, cellulite? Sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it? But what if it's quite the opposite, and instead opens the way to a profound questioning of our identity as women, of what we wish to experience and never experience again? Through the eyes of 12 women, Menopauses explores this time of life through stories told with lucidity and humor, which ultimately raise a broader question: until what age does society really consider us to be women?

Véro compares perimenopause to the lottery: you can experience 3, 10 or 30 symptoms. In her case, she won the lottery. The first signs came early in her life. So she didn't make the connection between the mood swings, water retention, dry skin, hair loss - and menopause. Before finding comfort, she wandered for years. Loto-Méno is her story, her quest, told with courage and frankness.

Ménopositive

Virtually every woman who enters menopause has questions about what’s happening to her body and how to effectively deal with the changes. The broad availability of medicines, remedies and even hormones even conveys the concept that menopause as a curable “deficiency disorder”. This documentary takes a look at the scientific and medical contexts of menopause as well as the latest findings in international research. Are artificial hormones medically necessary or a seductive, supposed fountain of youth? Do they truly assist in alleviating the suffering of women, or are they lifestyle drugs reflecting a zeitgeist in which ageing is no longer acceptable and older people are seen as “flawed”? A visual and provoking science documentary about the hot time of menopause that also takes a look at whether and how the hormones in men likewise go crazy.

Exploring the subject of menopause in Ireland, seeking to broaden the conversation around a subject often considered taboo and finding out how real women experience this life event which affects half the population.

A positive look at menopause. While different women confide how they experienced this natural and important passage in their lives, a female character tames her new environment and welcomes new ways of perceiving and projecting her femininity.

You-Turn is a short documentary that follows three menopausal women as they embark on a journey of reconnection and self-acceptance. After the damage that menopause has caused to their body image, this film explores the proces of speaking your truth, recognizing it’s worth, and being proud of it.

Rosemarie Blank made this film, which focuses on women aged around fifty, in collaboration with the organisation VIDO (Dutch: Vrouwen in de Overgang/Women in the Menopause). An all but invisible group of housewives who have spent their lives putting themselves last to ensure that their husbands and children can reach their full potential.

Unabashed comedian Lynne Koplitz offers a woman's take on being crazy, the benefits of childlessness and the three things all men really want.

When her only daughter goes off to university, an empty nest mother gets stuck taking care of her daughter's heart-broken ex-boyfriend, who she can't stand.

CONFESSIONS OF A MENOPAUSAL FEMME FATALE is a fearless stand-up storytelling concert film in which Shakoor uses raw honesty, wit, music, and personal narrative to share her 12-year journey through menopause—a transformative experience that reshaped her identity as a woman, mother, artist, and human being. Framed around a return trip to Hawaii nearly 40 years after she once called it home, the story unfolds when a panic attack triggers deep introspection, forcing Shakoor to confront unresolved struggles, including addiction, postpartum depression, loss, and self-reinvention. Through wit, song, and unflinching truth, Shakoor breaks the silence surrounding menopause in a powerful performance that challenges stigma, invites laughter, and inspires radical self-acceptance.

Menopause turns a hot flashin' wallflower into a super-hot superhero.

Se-eun is a janitor who is always the first to arrive at the pool where she works. One day, she runs into an old friend who is now a swimming instructor.

An unlikely basketball team of unappreciated middle-aged Texas women, all former high school champs, challenge the current high school girls’ state champs to raise money for breast cancer prevention. Sparks fly as the women go to comic extremes to prove themselves on and off the court, become a national media sensation, and gain a new lease on life.

Jungok, a housewife who suffers from menopausal symptoms after her period stops, sells her unused sanitary pads on an online trading platform. On the day of the trade, she meets a young girl.

In the 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona, the world's greatest football player, reached his apotheosis, redefining what is possible for one man to accomplish on a football pitch. His ability to take control of the ball -- the game -- an entire tournament -- split the world in two. It was both illuminating and an affront, beguiling and an outrage, and the fervor that surrounded him was unprecedented, bordering on the religious. Constructed from archive material, "Maradona '86" is an ode to this ultimate footballing idol, basking in the operatic intensity of his performance in Mexico as he wrote his name on football history forever.

Rain on a window pane, a fire truck, a tomcat with innumerable offspring: it is an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories - leads that Ruth Beckermann follows across Europe and the Mediterranean. Nigerian asylum seekers in Sicily, an Arab musician in Galilee, nationalists drunk on beer in Vienna, the Capitoline Wolf, and three veiled young women trying for minutes to cross a busy road in Alexandria. Threads, cloth and textiles pop up like book marks in a fabric of movement, of traveling or seeking refuge.

The story of Pixar's early short films illuminates not only the evolution of the company but also the early days of computer animation, when a small group of artists and scientists shared a single computer in a hallway, and struggled to create emotionally compelling short films.

Every year, thousands of commercials are made that never reach our TV screens, deemed too shocking to see. In order to make it onto the screen, they must clear all manner of obstacles, from fussy clients to obsessive regulators and restrictive rights issues. X-Rated takes a look at these outlawed pieces of advertising, revealing the most explicit, controversial and shocking ads never seen. These are ads that break all manner of taboos, from sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, animal cruelty, rapping pensioners, swearing children, suicidal toys and naked athletes to Kylie in her undies on a bucking bronco. Amongst the contributors are advertising executives, producers and censors. The programme also takes a look at the embarrassing world of western celebrities in Japanese ads.