French Women Filmmakers • Audrey Diwan

L’événement / Happening (Audrey Diwan, 2021, 100 min., France)

Registration closed, but Walk-Ins Welcome!

“Throughout, Diwan’s gaze remains clear, direct, fearless. She shows you a part of life that the movies rarely do. By which I mean: She shows you a woman who desires, desires to learn, have sex, bear children on her terms, be sovereign — a woman who, in choosing to live her life, risks becoming a criminal and dares to be free.” Manhola Dargis, New York Times

A cliché in detective fiction, “look for the woman” means to look for the source of mayhem to solve the mystery… This is exactly what we’ve done – look for la femme behind the camera to bring you the most memorable films made by women from France and beyond.

Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 2022. The setting is provincial France in 1963, just before the permissive society and the pop culture revolution – and certainly before the legalization of abortion, which did not happen in France until 1975. Anne Duchesne is a very talented student of literature. But Anne is pregnant. With mounting suppressed panic, she waits for her period and repeatedly writes “rien” in her diary. Her future is about to be destroyed but even asking for an abortion is to risk a jail sentence for you and anyone else who helps – or fails to denounce you. Anne’s escalating dread of the hostile entity within her body as well as the male authorities of medicine and law make it clear: she is guilty of a terrible sin, from which the men are mysteriously exempt. - The Guardian

Trigger warning: Polarizing topics, scenes with blood, self-mutilation

With a complimentary glass of Bourgogne Louis Jadot. Enter a chance to win Sofitel’s Le Bar gift certificate at this screening!

Post-screening discussion with Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Series curated by Nick Davis, Aimée Laberge and Paprika Bonnin-Occansey

* Entrée Libre for students with ID on-site/.edu addresses online. High school, college or university.

About Audrey Diwan

Audrey Diwan was born in France in 1980, from parents of Lebanese origin. Passionate about literature, she soon turned to journalism. She started out in the print media before moving on to the small screen, where she was a columnist on a number of cinema-related shows. In 2013, she was appointed editorial director of Stylist magazine.

In 2007, she published her first novel, La fabrication du mensonge, about marriage, which won two literary prizes. At the same time, Audrey Diwan put her pen to work for a number of TV directors. She also contributes to the screenplays of several feature films by fellow director Cédric Jimenez: La French (2012), HHhH (2015) and BAC Nord (2020). She is a renowned member of Collectif 50/50, a French NGO promoting equality between men and women in the film industry.

In 2019, the screenwriter steps behind the camera to direct her first film, Losing It. In 2021, she signed her second feature, L’événement / Happening, adapted from Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical account of her clandestine abortion in the early 60s. On September 12, 2021, the film won the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice Film Festival.

Trailer here