This screening of Mustang is proudly presented by the Embassy of Turkey

The conversation around the lack of female filmmakers working today is more prevalent in this age than ever, and Mustang is a stunning example of why female-directed and female-driven stories should be given so much more exposure and attention than they currently receive.

The debut feature of Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Mustang tells the story of five young orphaned sisters in a remote Turkish village. Triggered by an event at the start of the film, the girls face extreme backlash from their highly conservative family and society, and the film explores their lives under the thumb of suppressed sexuality and forced marriages.

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival to universal acclaim, Mustang went on to score numerous awards and nominations, including an Oscar nod for Best Foreign Language film. The movie is packed with powerful messages about how women can be imprisoned in society by a conservative morality. The five girls are the heart and soul of the movie, with each young actress delivering fully-realised, highly empathetic performances.

Just like the best coming-of-age movies, Mustang is funny and raw and real, in all the right parts. The direction is well-paced and builds to a heart-racing finale, but what will truly stick with you after the movie is its powerful feminist stance and the universal truths about female sexual oppression that are all too common in some societies even today.

One-shot feature films – where the whole film is either manipulated to look like it has been filmed in one continuous camera shot, or is actually filmed in one continuous camera shot – have been around at least since the 1940s. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (manipulated) is the most famous “first one” (there may be others before it) and recently Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s excellent Oscar winner Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (manipulated) brought the technique back to the conversation.

The most famous actual one-shot movie was last decade’s Russian Ark, a highly acclaimed historical drama that didn’t actually do much for me because, as a result of my poor knowledge of Russian history, I didn’t find anything else engaging enough once I had gotten past the gimmick.

Fortunately, Victoria has much more going for it than the fancy technique of actually being shot in one take over several hours. Essentially a dramatic thriller, it follows the title character as she walks through the night streets of Berlin, meets up with some young men, and eventually gets involved in some serious crime situations.

I had some reservations about how silly Victoria was in terms of the level of danger she was willing to risk by getting herself into private situations with complete strangers in a foreign city, but once I got past these personal concerns, I found this to be a thoroughly engaging crime movie that both utilises and transcends its central gimmick. It is mostly victorious (boom-tish) and a fun watch.