"So many women came to talk about something else and finished sharing a story about violence."
Filmmaker Anastasia Mikova interviewed over 2,000 women across 50 countries, and this is what she found out...
Filmmaker Anastasia Mikova interviewed over 2,000 women across 50 countries, and this is what she found out...
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00:00On every stage of life, being a woman quite often is not really a good thing for you to
00:16achieve something. But at the same time, oh my God, the resilience women have, it's as
00:21if they have been using all of these difficulties to kind of build themselves and become so
00:27strong. And for me, the main lesson of this film is not about the difficulties, it's about
00:32how strong women are and how resilient women are.
00:51There were so many women we came to talk about for something else and who finished sharing
00:56a story about that or that kind of violence. When we say that it's one woman in three in
01:02the world who faces violence during her lifetime, this is something I really witnessed during
01:07the shootings. I have been doing interviews all around the world for the last 15 years,
01:12so we haven't started two or three years ago. And I really witnessed a big difference. Fifteen
01:18years ago, in some countries, in Bangladesh, for example, where I have done quite a lot
01:23of shootings, it was impossible to find a woman ready to talk in front of the camera.
01:28And here we were, five years ago, with these women who would come to us and say, I want
01:35to talk, I want my story to be heard. This was completely new. And I think that actually,
01:41to be honest, it's internet and all the social media that have participated to this liberation
01:46of women voices.
01:54The central topic of this film is really related to women's body. Because everything we talk
02:00about, there are so many different topics, but all of it comes back to the body. For
02:06me, one of the main questions maybe that I ask myself, why in hell is it still such a
02:12problem? Why does society need so much to control our bodies and just can't let us go?
02:19I have spent more than three weeks in Congo, at the Pansy Hospital of the Mukwege, Dr Mukwege,
02:25who is a Nobel Peace Prize, and who have been repairing women who witnessed and who went
02:30through rape as a weapon of war for many, many years. And actually, when you are in
02:36front of those women who share stories, you can't even bear to hear it. It's too much.
02:41It's really, you can't hear those things because it's too horrible. And these women have been
02:45through this and they're still there in front of you, standing and telling you, I don't
02:50want to be a victim. I don't want to be victimised. I don't want to be my whole life seen as a
02:56woman who was raped because I'm so much more than that. If I had to reproduce all of the
03:01things I've heard about violence in the film, 70% of the film would talk about violence.
03:07But we decided not to talk about that because happily enough, a woman's life is not only
03:12about violence and discriminations. But it's when we say that we talk about it too much
03:17in the media right now, I'm saying we still don't talk about it enough.
03:21I'm no longer going to be quiet because it's embarrassing.
03:24The whole idea of this project was about breaking taboos, was about liberating women's voices,
03:31but not only on difficult topics. Happily enough, we don't have only this in our life,
03:36but it was also going on all these private, intimate topics that we actually never talk
03:41about publicly or almost never. And we thought, why is it still such a taboo to talk about
03:47orgasm? Why can't we talk about it? Let's try. And well, to be honest, I wanted us to
03:53do that and I wrote all of these questions, but I wasn't sure that it would work all around
03:58the world. So in some countries, you know, we always had translators or fixers working
04:03with us in different countries. And so it was funny because when we would come to that
04:07topic and I would say, OK, can you ask her about her first orgasm? And, you know, it's
04:12a very short question. Well, a translator would take five minutes to translate it. So
04:16already it would be like, OK, there is a problem. She's not even managing to say it, you know.
04:21And so then I thought, OK, maybe some of the women will not go into that. And actually,
04:27it was crazy. Once you would open the door, it was like, oh, my God, you couldn't even stop it.
04:34And we had to cut some of the stuff in the editing, because if not, it would be a kind
04:39of erotic movie, you know, because it was really as if they had been waiting for this moment where
04:44they could share also all the joy of having pleasure in their lives. I want this film to
04:49be a celebration for women. I want women to feel celebrated by this film. And I really hope that
04:55for men it would be more of a door opening to a whole new world where they can discover so
05:02much stuff, because, you know, there is a lot going on in our heads. Women are also quite
05:06complex creatures. And so I hope that for men it will be a kind of new world and a lot,
05:12a lot of things to understand.