She Rises Up chronicles the remarkable journeys of three women who are helping to lift their communities out of poverty through the local businesses they fight the odds to maintain. Gladys Yupanqui of Peru founded a mini-market and is looking to expand. Magatte Wade of Senegal is building a cosmetics manufacturing company. Selyna Peiris of Sri Lanka is expanding the textile company founded by her mother.

Nearly one-third of all countries have laws that stifle a woman’s access to work. They limit access to bank accounts, property inheritance, and many types of jobs. These countries have some of the highest poverty rates in the world.

Gladys, Magatte and Selyna’s stories are each unique unto themselves. Yet a common theme illustrates the critical importance of local businesses to emerging economies. These women prevail over issues that are not faced by the multinational corporations that come in. Opening a business in many countries is easier for a large foreign corporation than for local entrepreneurs.

McKinsey & Company has calculated that if women were to participate in the world economy to the same extent as men, they would add the equivalent of the combined economies of China and the U.S. to the world’s prosperity.

She Rises Up reveals the role entrepreneurs and small businesses can play in women gaining financial independence, and ultimately reducing poverty for all.

There’s change in the air, and it smells like class struggle, from a new breed of movies including Parasite, Triangle of Sadness and The Maid. The new comedy/mystery Coup! is a perfect addition to the trend. It’s set on an isolated mansion on New York’s Egg Island, where one of the super-rich – a journalist played by Billy Magnussen, has brought his family to wait out the 1918 Spanish Flu – all the while pretending to write about its’ horrors from the front lines. When his hand-picked vegetarian chef goes missing, he’s forced to pick a quick replacement. Enter Monk, a mysterious hoop earring-ed replacement played by Peter Sarsgaard with a delightful smirk behind his smile. Not too up on his vegetarian cuisine, chef Monk starts his attack on the 1% by first winning over the rest of the staff, and moving them into the mansion’s many rooms. But when he tries to persuade the journalist’s wife (Sarah Gadon) and children to fall in with his ideas of a more “equitable distribution of capital,” it sparks an amusing game of cat-and-mouse that just might get serious… “The film is fun, broad and exuberant…the revolution begins at home!” Xan Brooks, The Guardian.