Pandora’s Box: Lifting the Lid on Menstruation, a new documentary from Rebecca Snow, tackles patriarchal oppression. Specifically, on how those systems use menstruation to oppress women and transmen. It shows that oppression on a macro level. But it also does this on a micro level, letting its intreview subject reveal how their families dealt with menstruation. How families deal with girls, women, and transmen when they menstruate. One of these subjects is an activist in Mumbai, Sarika Gupta. She talks about how her mother couldn’t tell her anything about menstruation. And that’s because her mother didn’t have information on a taboo subject. Gupta, the founder of Safe N Happy Periods, would also recount on how her mother would call her curiosity ‘shameless’.

But the documentary shows that that shaming happens at the systemic level too. It then takes us from Mumbai to the Bronx. There the viewer finds another invterview subject, Topeka Sam, who recounts her experience as an incarcerated person. She had her period in jail. And the guards made her and other women find a cleaner pair of used underwear from a bin. The movie comes out in March 8, timely for two reasons. The first is, obviously, because that day is International Women’s Day. And the second is watching it in a political climate where people are realizing something about borders. That borders between developed and developing countries are blurring since both are mistreating women.

Pandora’s Box is one of a few documentaries about girls, women, and transmen fighting for rights surrounding menstrual oppression.  The interview subjects are diverse enough but the movie will have its shortcomings on that department. That’s specifically true when it comes to religion. It lets a white woman quote parts of holy texts that anti-menstrual. There’s also archive footage of a protest of men not allowing menstruating women in Hindu temples. Which yes, it’s a legitimate issue. But choosing footage of a white Al-Jazeera reporter covering the issue doesn’t make for the best optics. South Asians, after all, also report on those issues. (And yes, I see the irony of a cis man reviewing a women’s issue doc).

That said, Pandora’s Box isn’t just about the problems as they are about the solutions. The documentary then goes to Kenya where there are organizations reaching out to girls with periods. They also do outreach  women, and transmen who have complex problems about their periods. If these groups have no access, awareness, nor funds for period products, they provide such products. If those products contribute to landfills, they give access to products that they can wash discretely. The movie thinks of its subject and how it relates to other issues. It reaches that a wide variety of viewers who aren’t single issue consumers. It’s this 4d level chess intersectionalism that will make this film stand out.

Find out how to watch Pandora’s Box through https://www.pandorasboxthefilm.com/.