Kira Muratova’s Bold Legacy Lives On In Isa Willinger’s ‘No Mercy’

No Mercy, the new documentary by German director Isabella Willinger, examines how women filmmakers navigate artistic expression and resilience in male-dominated spaces.

Ukrainian-Soviet auteur Kira Muratova once posed the question, “Do women make tougher films?” During her lifetime, Muratova (1934–2018) was famously known for her innovative, psychologically infused works. Willinger’s No Mercy uses Muratova’s ideas and statements as its foundation, structuring her new work around them rather than drawing a conclusion.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, No Mercy “explores whether women’s experiences in patriarchal societies shape a distinct cinematic tone—one that confronts cruelty, injustice, and power with less restraint.” The film compiles interviews with female filmmakers from around the world, focusing on their varied backgrounds as Willinger inquires whether Muratova’s bold ideas still resonate in a modern context.

Muratova once argued that female directors often create with more ferocity because “women are slaves… so they prefer things that are harsh.” While filming, Willinger approached these themes analytically rather than ideologically. The goal of the film is not to prove Muratova right or wrong, but to focus on “mapping the emotional and aesthetic textures” of women’s filmmaking. The documentary features a wide range of directors who both embrace and reject the idea of cinematic “harshness,” revealing how women’s perspectives can be tough or tender—or even embody both simultaneously. That tether between anger and empathy forms the documentary’s emotional backbone.

The film also cautions that Muratova’s concepts could reignite old stereotypes about women’s anger or suffering. Yet Willinger’s project welcomes the debate, allowing each interviewee to reclaim or redefine what “harsh” personally means.

Ultimately, No Mercy serves as both a presentation and an inquiry—a homage to Muratova’s revolutionary artistry. The hope for the film is that it will reflect on how modern women negotiate expression through resistance and authorship. Like its origin, it “asks difficult questions and refuses to soften the answers.”