Watch Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan in the ‘Suffragette’ Trailer

an important film about an important movement

If you asked us which actresses we'd cast in a movie about the women's voting rights movement in Britain at the turn of the 20th century, we'd probably choose Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan. Both of them excel at period dramas, Streep has already proved she can do a flawless British accent, and they're two of the greatest living actresses—and thus are perfectly suited to tell this important story. No one asked us, but they must have heard our prayers, because a short teaser for Suffragette just dropped, and it stars Streep and Mulligan as activists fighting for a woman's right to vote. 

The British production, which was directed by Sarah Gavron, stars Mulligan as Maud, a wife and mother who joins a women's organization whose members were known as suffragettes. The suffragettes banded together to fight for voting rights, and as the trailer briefly shows, their methods sometimes veered towards violence, a grim reality the movie is likely to explore in depth. Streep plays Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the British suffragette movement, who tells Mulligan's character at the end of the trailer to "never surrender, never give up the fight." As if we weren't excited enough, Helena Bonham Carter also stars. 

Suffragette comes out in the U.S. on October 23, just in time for it to win all the awards.