Known for being Pakistan’s first female architect, this Oxford School of Architecture alumni has been internationally celebrated for her innovative designs and humanitarian efforts. Indeed, after just returning back to Pakistan following her university degree, Lari opened her architecture firm; Lari Associates. There, she focused on large-scale builds as well as the creation of homes for families being victims of natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods.

Es Devlin is an English artist and stage designer who gained international recognition from her extensive impact in the theatre world as well as the world of music production. Indeed, if she started by taking on a degree of English Literature at the Bristol University, she eventually came to realise that her passion was intricately linked with the stage and, after an arts foundation as the Central Saint Martins college, specialised her practice in set design. As her career progressed, she started taking on international projects such as designing the UK Pavillion at the 2020 World Exposition in Dubai.

To correctly describe Paola Antonelli’s practice takes time. Indeed, this Italian architect, professor, curator, author and editor has been established as one of the chief design visionaries of the 21st century. After graduating from the university Politecnico di Milano with a laurea degree in 1990, Antonelli went on to participate in the curation of exhibitions across Europe, having never actually practised as an architect. She was a contributor to the magazine Domus (from 1987-1991) as well as the design editor (from 1992-1994) of the Abitare magazine and even taught a course in design theory at the prestigious Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2003.

Adèle Haenel is a French actress mostly known for Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019) starring herself and Noémie Merlant, one of the other female figures of the year. After the shooting of Les Diables (2001) where Adèle Haenel was 12 years old and was attributed a very much sexualised character, she got sexually assaulted by the director, Christophe Ruggia. After her decision of leaving the cinema sphere for years now, what happened while she was minor led into a trial that is still waiting on a deliberation. Unfortunately, the media have been putting the focus on the “wrong” and not most important event; during the trial, Adèle Haenel could not take anymore of the violence of Christophe Ruggia and shouted “Shut the fuck up”.

We also owe to Portrait of a Lady on Fire the discovery of the talented Noémie Merlant, a French actress, director and singer. We saw her in 2024 with Emmanuelle (Audrey Diwan) as well as in The Balconettes directed by herself, released in theatres at the end of 2024. She delivers a feminist and powerful film, mixing comedy and horror. The film covers the matter of domestic violence, female friendships as well as toxic masculinity in an absurdist and almost vulgar tone.

To finish off with this week’s edition, we had to mention Margaret Qualley, especially for her outstanding acting in Maid (2021), a mini series created by Molly Smith Metzler and produced by Netflix. The episodes unravel the everyday life of a woman victim of domestic violence by the father of her daughter. She chooses to leave him and we get to follow her journey of working as a maid in order to provide for her daughter as well as herself. It is a tough and beautiful watch, carefully and respectfully depicting the reality of domestic abuse in regard of the victim.