Who

“‘If he wants a divorce, give it to him. The children are better off with him,’ Wanda says impassively to the judge. The young woman from the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania gives up her family, her job and even herself, with no clear destination in mind. Barbara Loden has cast herself in this role with painful directness: as a woman who gets involved with men who merely exploit her, and who is ultimately even pressured into taking part in a poorly planned bank robbery. Loden’s film, shot on 16 mm in 1970 with the smallest possible crew and a meagre budget, drifts through run-down bars and motels, across dusty roads and industrial wastelands (…). A critical success at the time, though not a box-office hit, Wanda, with its unflinching observation of everyday life, is now regarded as a milestone of feminist cinema and one of the most important films of the 1970s. It is a tragedy that Loden was unable to make another; she died of cancer in 1980 at the age of 48. Her husband, Elia Kazan, discovered a wealth of screenplays amongst her papers.” (epd Film)