[1][3][4] Van Brakel said that her ambition is to make movies about women who want to change their lives and their societies.
[11] Her fourth movie, Een Vrouw als Eva (A Woman Like Eve, 1979), starring Monique van de Ven and Maria Schneider as lesbian lovers, was a commercial success in the Netherlands, but the sexually explicit story of two women who fall in love at a feminist conference was not picked up in the United States, despite an enthusiastic endorsement by Shirley MacLaine.
She began collecting reproductions of paintings, many of which are shown in the 2006 documentary Ave Maria; Mary, she says, was an independent and educated woman who is politically important as well.
[6] Van Brakel's first four major movies (from Het Debuut to Een maand later) all centered on women and their clashes with the outside world.
[16] She is listed among a number of European women filmmakers who benefited from the feminist wave of the 1960s and 1970s and entered a previously male-dominated domain, including Mai Zetterling and Chantal Akerman; Een vrouw als Eva (1979) is mentioned as one of the female-directed movies that offer "very affirmative images of lesbianism".
[8] Her documentary work includes "various topics of feminist interest, such as children's education and the training of midwives",[8] a study of the Virgin Mary,[1] and the physical and social effects of aging.