The struggle for female emancipation comes under scrutiny in four of this week's five films. If these pictures are anything to go by, progress seems to have been slow since the mid-1950s and, while some cultures continue to oppress their womenfolk, other supposedly liberated women insist on making choices that appear ruinously retrogressive. In many ways, this quartet makes for dispiriting viewing. Yet, each film is well made, spiritedly played and conveys the domestic and political mood of its setting with acuity and precision.

This year sees the 100th anniversary of Indian film-making and the BFI has launched a two-part tribute to Satyajit Ray to mark the occasion. Working outside the Bollywood mainstream, Ray developed in Bengal a Parallel Cinema that owed more to neo-realism and the humanist cinema of Jean Renoir and Yasujiro Ozu than the masala musicals and melodramas that held sway across the rest of the subcontinent. Essentially, Ray was an independent, who appeal was perhaps greater among cineastes than the masses. But, while films like Mahanagar/The Big City (1963) earned Ray the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival, they also revealed his growing concern with the everyday issues shaping the lives of his audience.

Bank clerk  Subrata Mazumdar (Anil Chatterjee) is struggling to make ends meet in mid-1950s Calcutta. In addition to providing for wife Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) and five year-old son Pintu (Prasenjit Sarkar), Subrata also takes care of his ageing parents, Priyogopal (Haren Chatterjee) and Sarojini (Sefalika Devi), and his 14 year-old sister, Bani (Jaya Bhaduri). Her school fees are due, while Priyogopal needs a new pair of glasses to help him do his beloved prize crosswords and Sarojini would quite like a new tin of her favourite tobacco. Arati is proud of her husband and recognises the strain he is under, especially as his father (a retired schoolteacher who doesn't see the point of his daughter completing her basic education, let alone going to college) keeps reminding him of how so many of his other students are prospering while he bumps along in the lower middle classes.

On hearing how a neighbour's wife has found work as a tutor, Arati decides to get a job of her own and is hired by Himangshu Mukherjee (Haradhan Bannerjee) to go door-to-door selling knitting machines. At first, the act of knocking on a door and engaging a stranger in conversation fills Arati with dread and she runs away when a dour fellow demands to know what she wants. However, having befriended assertive Anglo-Indian Edith (Vicky Redwood), Arati begins to grow in confidence and, as her sales figures improve, she even starts wearing sunglasses and lipstick and eats breakfast with her husband as an equal rather than his servant.

But, as Arati seems set to become Himangshu's best rep, tensions start mounting at home. A traditionalist with very firm views on a woman's place, Priyogopal accuses Subrata of being weak for allowing his wife to go out to work. Moreover, when he disobeys his father by refusing to forbid her to continue with her career, Subrata finds himself sent to Coventry and forced to endure the humiliation of Priyogopal asking a pupil who has become an optician for a free pair of spectacles. With Pintu no longer placated by the toys his mother had bought him and starting to misbehave, Subrara is left with no option but to ask Arati to resign.

He promises that he will find a second job to supplement his income. But, on the morning she is due to hand in her letter, Subrata calls to tell her he has been fired from the bank and that she is now the sole breadwinner. As he sits in bed all day joylessly scanning the job ads in the local paper, Arati takes exception to Himangshu's prejudicial treatment of Edith when she is elected to negotiate a pay rise and demands that he apologises when he accuses her of being the wanton product of colonial bestiality. But Himangshu is not to be swayed and, when he sacks Edith, Arati hands in her resignation and storms out of the office. She bumps into Subrata on the street and confesses to her recklessness. But he is pleased that she has stood her corner and their estrangement is instantly forgotten, as they disappear into the crowd, confident that at least one of them will find a good job in such a big city.

Basing his screenplay on the Narendranath Mitra short story `Abataranika', Ray combines trenchant socio-political analysis with sly satire in what is essentially an Indian equivalent of the `kitchen sink' sagas dominating British cinema in the same period. The influence of Ozu's salaryman dramas is also evident, with Ray setting himself a technical challenge akin to the Japanese maestro's tatami mat camera angle by shooting the action in the Mazumdar household in sets with four walls that not only precluded long shots, but also emphasised the growing sense of a family getting on top of each other in such cramped confines. But, while Ray, cinematographer Subrata Mitra and production designer Bansi Chandragupta deftly exposed the fissures in the Mazumdar ranks, he also contrast the genteel conservatism of the pre-Partition generation and the brash nationalism of the nouveau riche, although Haren Chatterjee's old-fashioned snobbery proves every bit as objectionable as Haradhan Bannerjee's embittered xenophobia.

The performances are strong throughout, with Anil Chatterjee succumbing to emasculated egotism as his status is challenged and Madhabi Mukherjee excelling as the housewife discovering an unimagined world and revelling in the unfathomed personal qualities it encourages. Moreover, Ray handles the gentle shifts between confrontation and comedy with supreme assurance and, while the final shot rising above the teeming throng might smack a little of Hollywood sentimentality, this is a thoughtful, touching and tactful snapshot of a nation and its people at a turning point in their post-imperial transition.

The scene shifts to Stockholm for Mikael Marcimain's Call Girl, which recreates the sex scandal that threatened to erupt during the 1976 general election campaign. Around the same time, of course, a number of much-loved British celebrities were abusing their power to take advantage of young women and girls. But, while Operation Yewtree continues to expose those ensnared in the investigation into the heinous double life of Jimmy Savile, the Swedish courts chose to quash some of the accusations levelled against Prime Minister Olof Palme by screenwriter Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten and, as a consequence of the suit brought by his son, sequences suggesting that he paid for sex with underage girls have been removed from the original release print. In a couple of instances, these excisions impact directly upon the action. But the contention remains that, beneath its envied liberal exterior, Swedish society, both then and now, is rotten to the core and that those with vested interests and contacts in high places will always be able to cover up their peccadilloes and abandon the vulnerable to make whatever they can out of their shattered lives. 

David Dencik is a respected liaison officer in the justice ministry led by Claes Ljungmark. He is a regular client of Pernilla August, a madam who runs a high class call girl agency with her Polish assistant Ruth Vega Fernandez and her chauffeur, Sven Nordin. Their clients include government ministers, business executives and diplomats, as well as powerful crooks and members of the police elite. He is keen to keep a lid on an ongoing investigation into August's activities and is in cahoots with chief of police Claes-Göran Turesson to ensure that the different departments involved the case either run into dead-ends or find themselves on the tail of senior officers who have the power to continue the cover-up.

Fourteen year-old Sofia Karemyr finds herself being drawn into this sordid world when she is dropped off by her mother at a children's home on the outskirts of the city and placed in the care of social worker Hanna Ullerstam. She is an impressionable girl and, when her friend Josefin Asplund suggests they sneak out to go clubbing downtown, it is almost inevitable that they should be recruited by Jade Viljamaa to dance topless for an older man and that he will introduce them to August.

As August welcomes Karemyr and Asplund into her brood and starts training them for active service, Detective Simon J. Berger vows to get to bring August to justice and finds a willing accomplice in soon-to-retire homicide veteran Anders Beckman. However, his determination is matched by his naiveté and he is tailed everywhere he goes before being badly beaten by thugs he eventually discovers have connections with his own department. As he learns some harsh lessons, so do Karemyr and Asplund when August forces them into having sex with their first clients. Karemyr attempts to resist and is physically punished and threatened with blackmail unless she co-operates. Recognising how sullen and withdrawn she has become, Ullerstam tries to find out what is bothering her and tries to tell her superiors about her suspicions.

However, August has friends with much to lose in too many places for Ullerstam's claims to be taken seriously. But, when Karemyr collapses and is sent to a secure unit for observation, Berger manages to track her down. He has been deeply frustrated by the way in which the surveillance tapes he has commandeered have been doctored to protect the guilty and is keen to convince her that no one will be able to harm her. So, when August is taken into custody, he coaxes Karemyr into testifying against her. He is appalled when she begins identifying some of the man she has slept with, as they have been trying to push through legislation decriminalising incest and calling for equal rights for women in all spheres of Swedish life.

Yet, when Berger presents his report to Ljungmark, it quickly becomes clear that it could not only prevent the Swedish Social Democratic Party from retaining power and it is suppressed on Krepper's orders. Moreover, the investigation is closed and August's proposed sentence is suspended and she is allowed to go free. Shortly afterwards, Berger is killed in a hit-and-run accident and, realising that she can no longer trust anyone, Karemyr takes a bus out of the city into an uncertain future.

Given the shocking happenings revealed during Operation Bullfinch, this is a period picture with chilling contemporary relevance for our own city. But, while Marcimain lays bare the hypocrisy underlying the chauvinist establishment and the flawed libertarianism behind the permissive attitudes to all matter sexual, he allows Hoyte Van Hoytema's camera to linger on copious amounts of female flesh. Moreover, while he mocks the seedy lustfulness of the parties by having August and Vega Fernandez perform a salacious dance on a table top, he has no qualms about showing Karemyr and Asplund topless and even depicts a murdered prostitute in a disarming state of undress.

Yet, while accusations of fetishisation are valid, they are even more relevant where Lina Nordqvist and Michael Higgins's décor and Cilla Rörby's costumes are concerned. Every prop, item of furniture and outfit has been impeccably researched to create an IKEA-ABBA wonderland that is so mesmerisingly evocative that it almost threatens to overwhelm the narrative. Indeed, the trappings are depicted so lovingly that the lingering close-ups and splendidly parodic zoom shots become more important than the thematic analysis. Mattias Bärjed's synthesised score also comes close to being kitsch. Yet, Marcimain resists the temptation to indulge in cosy or corny nostalgia, as the look and mood of the times are adroitly used to comment on the corruption, carnality and callousness of the patriarchal clique conspiring with cynical opportunists like August's despicable madam.

Revelling in the chance to play an arch-villainous, August gives one of the finest performances of an impressive career. But she is never fully the focus of the action, as it veers from Dencik's factotum, the exploited Karemyr and the dogged Berger. Consequently, the plot meanders and the shift in tone between the period pastiche and the ScandiCrime is not only abrupt, but also unconvincing. This is slightly surprising, given that Marciman was Tomas Alfredson's assistant on the meticulous 2011 John Le Carré adaptation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and that he has plenty of experience on the small screen. But he also struggles to make the contrasts between the politicians speechifying and fornicating and between the escorts cavorting licentiously and testifying with abashed intensity about the pleasures of entertaining a better class of john. Thus, for all the magnificence of the mise-en-scène and the boldness of the performances by the female leads, this often feels sluggish, coldly dispassionate and, ultimately, lacks the human interest to match its authenticity.

Procurement of another kind is in evidence in Kurdish-Austrian debutant Umut Dag's Kuma, a meditation on gender and cultural assimilation that comes to rely increasingly on melodrama once screenwriter Petra Ladinigg has sprung her two key plot twists. Like Reis Celik's Night of Silence, this opens with a wedding that turns out to be a sham and similarly confines the action to enclosed spaces to highlight the hapless heroine's plight. But, while also exploring the role of tradition in Turkish and Kurdish communities, this well-meaning, if ultimately, contrived domestic saga makes adroit use of the unseen host society to suggest how alien attitudes and mores insinuate themselves into the migrant consciousness and begin fragmenting previously unified enclaves along generational, gender, class and religious lines.

In a small village in the hills of Anatolia, 19 year-old Begüm Akkaya is given in marriage to Murathan Muslu, a handsome young man who has travelled with his family from Vienna for the occasion. Shyness prevents Akkaya from questioning why the union is not consummated that night, but she soon discovers, as she leaves her home behind, that she has been duped into marrying Muslu, as he will not be her husband. Instead, she will be the `kuma' or second wife of his ageing father, Vedat Erincin, whose wife, Nihal G. Koldas is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and has devised the entire scheme so that Erincin and their younger offspring, Merve Cevik and Abdulkadir Tuncer, have someone to look after them if she dies.

Older sisters Alev Irmak and Dilara Karabayir wholly disapprove of the arrangement, which has been contracted by by-pass Austrian laws prohibiting polygamy. But Erincin and Koldas are kind to Akkaya and her willingness to help around the crowded home soon wins over Cevik and Tuncer. When she announces she is pregnant, however, Irmak and Karabayir protest vociferously and do their best to make Akkaya feel unwanted. But everything changes when Koldas goes into hospital for an operation that brings about a miraculous recovery just as she is widowed by Erincin's unexpected death.

Suddenly feeling vulnerable, Akkaya asks Muslu if they can live together as husband and wife. But he admits that he is gay and would only make her miserable and would bring shame upon her if his secret is discovered by their judgemental neighbours. Akkaya has been teaching herself German and offers to get a job stacking shelves at the local halal supermarket in order to supplement the family's meagre income. Koldas is grateful for her offer and agrees to look after the baby. However, Akkaya soon finds herself becoming attracted to co-worker Berk Kristal and they make love in the store after hours. Unfortunately, their next tryst is discovered by Koldas, who is so furious that she drags Akkaya home by the hair and beats her.

Despite suffering regular beatings at the hands of her own husband, Irmak thoroughly approves of her mother's behaviour. Indeed, she joins with Karabayir in demanding that Akkaya and her child are sent home in disgrace. But Muslu recognises that she would be mistreated by her family and decides to make a stand and impose himself as the man of the house. He declares that Akkaya will remain in Vienna and will be accorded the respect she deserves. Gradually, his siblings forgive the indiscretion and Koldas eventually accepts her as one of the family and looks to the future that they can only survive if the face it together. 

British audiences have become reasonably acquainted with the Gastarbeiter community in Germany, thanks to the films of Fatih Akin, Yüksel Yavuz and Thomas Arslan. But this is one of the few insights into the Austrian side of the equation to have reached this country and it is fascinating to see how Dag and Ladinigg expose the extent to which migrants embrace and reject integration as and when it suits them. Although they proclaim their unswerving loyalty to the customs of the old country, Irmak and Karabayir use German as a code to discuss the newly arrived Akkaya in her presence without her being able to understand them. Indeed, the pair often seem like the Goneril and Regan of the story, as they oppose everything their parents do until it impinges directly upon their own situation.

It is also intriguing how quickly Akkaya comes to transgress in a very Western manner once she starts working in a traditional Turkish shop, although her actions are somewhat predicated by her mother's telephone suggestion on arriving in Vienna that she closes her eyes during intercourse and imagine she is making love with someone of her own choosing. Moreover, it is noticeable that nobody blames Kristal for his part in the scandal. But, by this stage, Dag and Ladinigg have begun to pile the domestic crises ever higher and deeper and, were it not for the challengingly elliptic nature of Claudia Linzer's editing, this might easily have descended into arthouse soap. However, the performances of the largely non-professional cast are admirable, with Akkaya and Koldas standing out as the innocent bride and scheming matriarch.

The theme of a second wife falling foul of her new family has been common in African cinema since Ousmane Sembene's Xala (1975) and it has recently been explored in Israeli Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void and Filipino Brillante Mendoza's Thy Womb (both 2012). But Dag avoids exploring it in an openly European context by keeping so much of the story confined within Katrin Huber's claustrophobic sets. Apart from the opening sequences and the encounters in the supermarket, the majority of the action takes place inside an enclosed milieu, which is largely controlled by women, in spite of the fact that the wider community is still ostensibly patriarchal. By hinting at the world beyond the walls, Dag forces the audience to consider Austrian attitudes to the strangers living in their midst and the extent to which they are welcomed as part of a homogeneous society. But, for all its sociological authenticity and aesthetic acuity, this tries to tackle too many pressing issues at once and, thus, with its pacing occasionally being a touch too deliberate, it can never quite disguise its affectedness.

Breaking with the tradition of recent Tibetan documentaries, Dirk Simon's When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun eschews the staunchly anti-Chinese stance to provide a laudably balanced summary of the arguments for and against Tibetan autonomy. Using as a fulcrum the worldwide protests held before the 2008 Beijing Olympics that were designed to embarrass the Communist regime at a crucial moment in its bid for global acceptance, Simon pieces together the key events that have occurred since the Communist invasion of 1949. But he is much more concerned with the future than the past and gives advocates of each mooted solution plenty of latitude to make their case.

Naturally, due deference is paid to the Dalai Lama's call for a Middle Way that would see Tibet achieve self-rule within the People's Republic. However, while Samdhong Rinpoche (Prime Minister of the government in exile) and Lhagyari Trichen Namgyal Wangchuk (the teenage heir to the Dharma throne) support his position, some want to sabotage electricity plants and industrial facilities to dim the lights on the shopping malls that now dot a once determinedly non-materialistic place, while others still are determined to abandon peaceful diplomacy and take up arms to secure their ends. Lhasang Tsering and Tenzin Dorjee of Students for a Free Tibet, for example, want nothing less than total independence.

Celebrity champions like Richard Gere and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are also allowed air time, while Lhakpu Kyizom of Tibet's Active Nonviolence Education Centre (who is one of the few women to be interviewed here) calls for open discussion with Chinese scholars and students so that each side can gain a greater understanding of their different positions. But Simon also permits the Chinese to outline their arguments and engage in the kind of frank debate that so many advocatory documentaries shy away from for fear of undermining their standpoint.

That said, it is never in doubt where Simon stands from the moment he includes provocative footage of the 1949 incursion, as well as the efforts of various Tibetan cadres to resist the occupation and the mass demonstrations in Lhasa in 1998, which ended in violence and brutal repression. But, while the polemic may occasionally be strident, Simon reveals how a once unified defiance is gradually being fragmented and not even the Dalai can impose his authority upon those bent on taking alternative courses of action.

In addition to forcing outsiders to reassess their thinking on this gnarled problem, this challenging piece also has a striking audiovisual element, with editor Dave Krahling's stylised (if sometimes fussily frantic) montages of archive material, news footage and time-lapse and helicopter shots of the breathtaking landscape being complemented by animated interludes and dance sequences. These are evocatively accompanied by a Philip Glass score that is counterpointed by contributions from Damien Rice and Thom Yorke. But Simon doesn't always resist the temptation to push too far and, while he is right to highlight the reluctance of the United States to condemn Maoist China for invading a sovereign state for fear of driving it into a closer alliance with the Soviet Union, some of his points are over-zealously made, most notably the contrast between Zhang Yimou's opening ceremony and the authoritarian regimentation shown in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), which is reinforced by both a reference to the fact that Tibetans now number some six million and Tenzin Dorjee's assertion that they are facing a new holocaust.