Happening
A student becomes pregnant and wants to have an abortion - but that is forbidden in France in the 1960s. In her film adaptation of Annie Ernaux's book "The Event," Audrey Diwan tells the story of a young woman's attempt to take control of her own body.
Lingui
An uneducated, hard-working woman in Chad's capital, N'Djamena, emancipates herself from a male society that tells her what to do. She stands by her teenage daughter who wants to terminate her pregnancy, although religion and the law forbid her to do so.
La Branlette Du Petit Matin
With the aid of a chocolate cake recipe the Youtuber Marie Marquise explains that the right to an abortion in France is fixated by the "Loi Veil" (Abortion Legalisation Law), but that other countries like Poland today have to be questioned on their rights to abort.
One Sings, the Other Doesn't
Pauline (Valérie Mairesse), a schoolgirl studying for her baccalaureate, wanders into a gallery and recognizes an old friend, Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), in one of the photographs displayed. Suzanne has two children with the photographer and is expecting a third which she cannot afford to keep. In order to help raise funds for an abortion, Pauline lies to her parents about a school trip, and when …
Let abortion be quiet
38 years after the law authorizing abortion in France, the film attempts to show the everyday work in the center of the family planning Kremlin Bicetre Hospital, to enable women to be welcomed in the best possible conditions. Working in a family planning centre is not a business like any other. Heirs / heiresses of MLAC (Freedom Movement of abortion and contraception) professional (the) s aggrega…
History of a Secret
"Histore d‘un secret", a film telling the story of the mysterious disappearance of the director‘s mother, is constructed at the borderline of fiction and documentary: following a definite script, in which the starting point of every scene was written, the film then developed according to the spontaneous unfolding of events, punctuated by the revelations made by each protagonist. The film-maker ha…
Nine stories of clandestine abortions
Madeleine, Jacqueline, Jocelyne, Micheline and others. Women between 50 to 80 years, fully integrated, tell us a hidden and painful episode in their lives, often their worst memory: Their clandestine abortions before the Veil Act 1975.
Film words, a collection of rare words coming out of amnesia where they were buried. With detours memory, forgetfulness, whispers and silences, impossibilities to…
The Bush Global Gag Rule
Since 2001, for ideological and religious reasons, the American administration has cut any financial support for those organisations that defend the right to abortion. As a consequence, numerous clinics had to be closed, a fact that has made the situation of women in Kenya become more and more drastic. More than 4,000 women die there annually, due to the catastrophic medical and hygienic circumst…
Story of Women
Claude Chabrol’s matter-of-fact view of the theme of illegal abortion, his criticism of society’s double standards and of a male-dominated judiciary in 1940s France is today considered to be one of the most important films dealing with abortion. Chabrol directs his documentary-like film, which is based on an authentic case, with a great deal of psychological sensitivity for his main character – a…
