American audiences weren’t ready for Barbara Loden’s Wanda when it premiered in 1970. A stark portrait of a working-class woman, who breaks free of a miserable marriage only to find herself on the lam with an abusive bank robber, is now widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of independent cinema, and also as a cornerstone of women’s filmmaking. It’s a jagged, unvarnished, haunting portrait of social and psychological entrapment, that is borne out by the still-pathetic lack of opportunities for female directors in the American film industry.