The aim of the master's thesis is to analyze women's experiences of the city in French film after the rise of the #MeToo movement and to contribute to the theorization of the gendered marking of cities through a feminist and phenomenological perspective. The work first approaches the topic by establishing theoretical foundations and outlining the mutual relationship between the city and film, phenomenological theory and the concept of lived experience and embodiment, and further through the exploration of the female gaze and female film. Through the theory of intersectionality, it attempts to unravel problematic nature/culture and public/private binaries, which have historically pushed women within patriarchal society into rigid gender categories on which violent and oppressive social expectations were built. The theoretical framework serves as the foundation for the analysis of films by French female directors, which the work confronts through a phenomenological framework and with the help of multimodal and feminist analysis. We treat films as a cultural product that emerged in a specific socio-historical context, in this case primarily the #MeToo movement, which shook both the global and French film industries and opened up a new space for women's stories. Through film analysis we find that experiences of the city and urban environment are depicted as ambivalent, first as a space on which oppressive social expectations are imprinted, but at the same time as a space that offers women the opportunity to transcend narrow categories of femininity.
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