As the battle rages in the United States around the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, directors and actresses have stepped up to the plate at the Sundance festival to warn of the serious dangers that clandestine abortions pose to women and to society. .
The feature film Call Jane and the documentary The Janes are both devoted to the collective created in the 1960s in Chicago to help women find doctors who perform abortions, which were severely punished at the time. The French movie The Eventby Audrey Diwan, which follows the obstacle course of a young woman wishing to put an end to her unwanted pregnancy in France in 1963, was also presented at the prestigious independent film festival before its release in the United States.
The festival is taking place virtually again this year, due to the health crisis.
“I knew that time and, believe me, we don’t want to go back”launched Sigourney Weaver, star of Call JaneFriday, January 21 during the presentation of the film. “I hope we will mobilize the younger generation who have always had this possibility” to abort and “may have taken it for granted”, said the actress.
The Sundance festival this year coincides with the 49th anniversary of the “Roe v. Wade” case law, which founded the right to abortion in the United States and whose future is now suspended by a decision of the Supreme Court. This right is regularly called into question by local laws adopted in certain American republican states which restrict access to abortion. Defenders of women’s rights fear that the Supreme Court, dominated by conservative judges, three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, will soon reconsider this legal framework.
For Phyllis Nagy, the director of Call Janeit was “urgent” to “to tell a story about women who allow other women to emancipate themselves, with humor and a touch of lightness”. “This is an important subject (…) These things are extremely essential so that our right to choose does not disappear completely”, she believes.
The “Jane” collective appeared in the United States at the end of the 1960s, in the wake of the movement for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. It remained active until the legalization of abortion in 1973. Its volunteers, mostly women, organized telephone hotlines, made their apartments available for operations and used the family car to transport pregnant women to the hospital. place of abortion. Some of these “Janes” even ended up learning how to perform an abortion themselves.
“These are women without whom I would never have had the freedoms that I have enjoyed all my life”underlines the actress Elizabeth Banks, one of the many stars of Call Jane. A dozen of these activists are interviewed in the HBO documentary The Janes, presented on January 24 at Sundance. Among them is Heather Booth, who launched the collective after having to find a doctor in a hurry to help the sister of a friend who was victim of suicidal impulses after becoming pregnant.
“The mere fact of talking about abortion was considered an attempted crime”, she recalls. When the “Roe v. Wade” case law was passed, several female Janes activists had been arrested and charged. “We thought it was over (…) We thought we had won”, says another activist, identified only as “Jeanne”.
Based on the autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, The Event was celebrated last year at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion. The film depicts not only the dangers, legal and medical, of clandestine abortions but also the rejection, loneliness and sometimes the shame of the women who have had to go through this ordeal.
“What I expect is not just to show the film to people who agree with me, but to people who don’t and ask +how do you react?”Audrey Diwan told AFP on Sunday. “It’s one thing to say ‘I’m against abortion’, but do you accept that a human being has to go through such a journey?”
In 1960s France, “If you helped someone to have an abortion, you could end up in prison”, recalls the director. “I highlight this because I know that, unfortunately, this is still the case today in other countries.”