Underrated Biopics On Women You Didn't Learn About In History Class

They say history is written by the victors. But just as often, it is shaped by selective memory, by those who decide which stories are worth telling, and how they are remembered. Certain figures are Hollywood staples: if you've won a war, led an empire, or fit neatly into an agreed-upon legend, your legacy is assured. Princess Diana's story, for example, has been portrayed in multiple movies and TV shows. But history is just as much about who gets left out, and the margins are filled with women whose achievements have been forgotten, overshadowed, misattributed, or erased by design.

Reese Witherspoon, a longtime champion of women's stories with her feminist-focused book club, once said in a now-viral moment: "Women's stories matter. They just matter." And yet, the stories Hollywood flocks to so frequently usually surround figures already enshrined in textbooks. Meanwhile, countless women who shaped the world remain hidden between the lines, likely due to the disruption they cause in the prevailing narrative.

The women at the center of these films didn't make it onto the syllabus, but their stories are no less extraordinary. Some broke barriers and paid the price for it. Others were simply too far ahead of their time to be granted the recognition they deserved. While Women's History Month and International Women's Day offer an annual moment to reflect on these neglected stories, their impact needn't be confined to a single celebration. Let these biopics do what your high school curriculum didn't: confront misogyny and bring some long-overdue truths to the forefront.

Think you don't need to see "Till" because you already know the story? Think again. "You already know the trauma. We don't need to show you, that's why we don't," explained Whoopi Goldberg, one of the film's producers, to Seasoned. "It's not about what was done to her child, it's about what she does after that, and that's why you need to see it." Director Chinonye Chukwu doesn't rehash familiar horrors. Instead, she focuses on Mamie Till-Mobley, played beautifully by Danielle Deadwyler, the woman who channeled personal devastation into a national reckoning.

"Till" begins in Chicago, bathed in warm, pastel light, with Mamie and her son, Emmett — played by Jalyn Hall, who delivers an infectiously buoyant performance. Mamie warns him about the South and the dangers of being seen the wrong way, in the wrong place. But Emmett, all exuberance and charm, cannot yet fully grasp the weight of her fears. Then, he is gone. Chukwu spares us the violence, but not its aftermath.

Refusing to let America look away, Mamie is forced into activism. That it took until 2022 for Emmett's murder to be acknowledged in federal law is proof of why "Till" remains essential viewing. The past does not simply disappear, and this stirring biopic insists that we shouldn't allow time to erode its weight.

Emily Dickinson has been many things in the public imagination: a reclusive genius, a death-obsessed spinster, the sixth cousin (three times removed) of self-proclaimed tortured poet, Taylor Swift. But in "Wild Nights with Emily," writer-director Madeleine Olnek rips up the myth and starts afresh. She gives us a Dickinson that is passionate, ambitious, and — crucially — not only queer, but also far from alone.

History tried to erase Dickinson's love for Susan Gilbert, but the truth is written in ink. "Wild Nights with Emily" restores Gilbert to her rightful place as the lodestar of Dickinson's world. The pair pass notes and steal kisses, building something real under the noses of those too blinded by the convention to see it. Although it's set in 19th-century New England, the story feels as urgent and rebellious as ever.

Where past biopics have draped Dickinson in funereal quietude, "Wild Nights with Emily" throws open the shutters, flooding her world with light and laughter. It rejects melancholy in favor of something far more radical: joyful defiance. In reinstating Gilbert as the love of Dickinson's life, and exposing the heavy-handed revisions that stripped her work of its queerness, the film lays bare the extent to which her legacy was sanitized to fit a narrative considered more palatable at the time. As we see, history can be shaped as much by omission as by fact. But as Dickinson herself once wrote, "The Truth must dazzle gradually."

The Clark Sisters outsold every female gospel group before them, and shaped the sound of pop and R&B as we know it today. And yet, outside of gospel circles, their story remains unsung. "The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel" sets the record straight, following the extraordinary rise of five sisters from Detroit who became the highest-selling female gospel group in history, and later recipients of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Driving the rhythm of the story is Dr. Mattie Moss Clark, brought to life by Aunjanue Ellis in a performance that garnered critical acclaim. It takes a certain kind of woman to raise five daughters who would go on to revolutionize gospel music. It takes an even rarer one to do so whilst battling a husband who resents her ambition, a church that seeks to contain her influence, and an industry that underestimates her daughters. But Mattie is a woman of brilliance and conviction.

What "The Clark Sisters" captures so well is the complexity of devotion. It is a film about faith, but also about the cost of greatness. Directed by Christine Swanson and produced by icons including Queen Latifah and Mary J. Blige, "The Clark Sisters" traces the tension between devotion and defiance. It is a film about music, but it is also an exploration of the uneasy space Black women occupy in institutions meant to uplift them. The church elevates their voice, but dictates their limits; the music industry profits from their talent, yet refuses them autonomy. As cinephiles and music fans, we should be grateful their harmonies persevered regardless.

If the names Noor Inayat Khan, Virginia Hall, and Vera Atkins don't immediately ring a bell, it's not because of their lack of heroism. These women were agents of the Special Operations Executive, the covert British spy agency assembled under Winston Churchill to conduct reconnaissance and sabotage in Nazi-occupied Europe. "A Call to Spy" treats their story with the kind of slow-burning tension befitting a war film that swaps gunfire for subterfuge.

The film brings into sharp relief the condescension these women endured — not just from the enemy, but from their own side. Khan, the daughter of an Indian Sufi mystic and a prodigious radio operator, transmits critical intelligence whilst evading Nazi detection. Hall, once dismissed from diplomatic service because of her disability, finds herself in Lyon, France, orchestrating attacks and guiding agents to safety. Meanwhile, Atkins is the steadfast leader pulling the strings back in wartime London, battling bureaucracy and prejudice to keep her agents alive.

Admirably, the film resists the urge to mythologize. These are real women who confronted impossible odds and shouldered a war effort that barely acknowledged them. Their courage, largely footnoted by history, is given its due here. The ending is sobering, but so is the nature of their mission — a perilous endeavor carried out in service of Churchill's call to "go and set Europe ablaze."

Before she learned the rules of chess, Phiona Mutesi knew the rules of survival. Sell maize in the streets, make just enough to eat, and expect little else. But when she wanders into a chess club run by Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), a missionary and former soccer player, it turns out she's rather good. 

What begins as curiosity turns into mastery. Her talent is undeniable, her instinct for the game cutting through years of experience and formal training. Her mother, the proud and wary Nakku Harriet, is portrayed by the incomparable Lupita Nyong'o, who has long tackled women's issues. Harriet knows all too well the weight of dreams that prove fragile. But under Katende's mentorship, Phiona rises from local competitions to the world stage: a girl from Uganda sitting across from grandmasters who have spent their lives preparing for the moment she enters by sheer force of will.

Phiona's odyssey might have remained a local legend if not for ESPN The Magazine, in which journalist Tim Crothers first traced her ascent to greatness. The article became a book, and the book became a film. The movie has done more than simply tell her story, though. A study from the University of Oxford found that Ugandan students who watched the movie before their national exams were significantly less likely to fail — with the most pronounced effects seen in female and lower-performing students. The research makes a compelling case for what role models can do.