Silenced is a bracing, compassionate, and urgently necessary documentary that transforms complex legal battles into a deeply human story about power, credibility, and the precariousness of women’s voices in public life. Director Selina Miles delivers a film that is both rigorously investigated and profoundly felt, blending courtroom insight with intimate, vérité-style storytelling that keeps the focus firmly on the women who have dared to speak out – and the systems that have tried to quiet them.
At the film’s centre is international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, a compelling and clarifying guide through a global landscape in which defamation laws have increasingly been weaponised against survivors of gender-based violence and the journalists who report on them. Miles makes these legal mechanisms feel immediate and personal, showing how abstract principles of reputation and free speech translate into real emotional, financial, and psychological consequences for women. Rather than becoming a procedural legal documentary, Silenced insists on the primacy of lived experience, grounding every argument in the human cost of silence and retaliation.
The film’s power emerges from its interwoven, transnational portraits of women confronting different, yet eerily connected, forms of institutional and cultural backlash. Amber Heard’s story becomes one of the documentary’s most resonant case studies: Miles and Robinson contextualise how Heard was subjected to an orchestrated wave of online misogyny and legal pressure, revealing how public narrative can be manipulated to discredit a woman before the courts have even spoken. Heard’s presence in the film is not framed as self-serving, but as emblematic of a broader pattern in which women who speak about abuse are treated with suspicion, ridicule, or outright hostility.
Catalina Ruiz-Navarro’s courageous battle against judicial harassment in Colombia underscores the peril faced by feminist journalists in Latin America, where telling the truth can carry risks of bankruptcy, imprisonment, or worse. Her story widens the film’s scope beyond celebrity and politics, illustrating that the silencing of women is not confined to high-profile cases but is embedded across legal and media systems worldwide.
In Australia, Brittany Higgins’ deeply affecting testimony anchors the documentary in a story of personal trauma that catalysed national reckoning. Miles treats Higgins with sensitivity and respect, foregrounding her resilience while acknowledging the immense toll that speaking out took on her life. Her journey from Parliament House to advocacy on the global stage embodies the film’s central argument: that women’s voices are not only worth protecting, but essential to meaningful social change.
Formally, Silenced is as thoughtful as it is urgent. Michael Latham’s handheld cinematography creates an intimate, unvarnished closeness with the participants, while Bernadette Murray’s precise editing deftly balances legal complexity with emotional clarity. The film never sensationalises pain, but it also never softens the stakes – the audience is made to feel how much is at risk when women refuse to be quiet.
Ultimately, Silenced is less about defamation law than about whose voices are granted legitimacy in our society. It is a stirring reminder that listening to women is not merely a moral obligation but a democratic one. By amplifying the voices of survivors, journalists, and feminist lawyers, the documentary argues persuasively that justice depends on our willingness to believe, protect, and make space for women who tell uncomfortable truths.
Compelling, carefully crafted, and profoundly moving, Silenced stands as a vital work of contemporary documentary filmmaking – one that challenges audiences to reconsider how we treat women who speak, and to recognise that true progress begins with ensuring that their voices cannot be silenced.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Silenced screened as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which ran between January 22nd and February 1st, 2026. For more information head to the official site here.
