Tank Girl (35mm)

Co-Presented by Frameline and The Curve Foundation

Tank Girl Director Rachel Talalay will be in conversation with filmmaker Alice Wu in an extended zoom introduction!

For Lesbian Visibility Week 2025, Frameline, The Curve Foundation, and the Roxie Theater are banding together for the second year in a row to create a place for lesbians to see and be seen. Presented by award-winning Bay Area director and screenwriter Alice Wu (The Half of It; Saving Face), our screening of Rachel Talalay’s feminist cyberpunk adventure Tank Girl (1995) will also double as the second installment in Frameline’s Retro Redemptions series, where we dust off films from the not-so-distant past that didn’t get the proper recognition or appreciation in their day, and each film will be specially chosen by a different notable figure from the queer art world.

Adapted from the British comic of the same name by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, Tank Girl was both a critical and commercial failure upon its initial release, but time has been a lot kinder to our spunky post-apocalyptic heroine — played with hyper dedication by lesbian icon Lori Petty. Set in the year 2033, the film follows Petty in the title role as she rolls through a sandy, Mad Max-esque dystopia and fights against a corporate villain (Malcolm McDowell) who is hoarding Earth’s dwindling water supply.

Boasting a killer soundtrack of ‘90s alt rock (Portishead, L7, Björk, Hole, and Veruca Salt, to name a few), Tank Girl also features a great supporting cast, which includes Naomi Watts as Jet Girl, Ice-T and Reg E. Cathey as half-human/half-kangaroo supersoldiers, Ann Magnuson as a sex club madame, and Iggy Pop as a pervert named Rat Face. Was Tank Girl ahead of its time? Has she aged into a full-fledged cult classic? Join us and find out. Special guests to be announced!!