Spoiler alert: the women don’t win.
But if there is a silver lining, the films of the Hamptons International Film Festival tell stories of women coming together, against the odds, to remain in the fight.
“Zurawski v Texas” documents the incredibly painful journey of three women who were denied critical care under the Texas abortion ban and the long-term effects of that denial of health care. We see the heroic efforts of these women to share their trauma in public and the lawyers who vowed to fight against the law. These women and men put their vulnerability front and center and bring the viewer on the ride for the gripping drama, which will not leave any audience member unmoved.
In October of 1975, the women of Iceland brought their country to a standstill when they refused to work in the professional sector and at home. Coming up on the 50th anniversary, the documentary “The Day Iceland Stood Still” takes a look back on one courageous act and its effect. Here, semantics matter, where it was called “a day off” instead of a strike, perhaps making it more palatable, although the effect was the same. The women banded together and brought the country to a halt, making front-page news. Iceland is the only country to have closed over 90 percent of its gender pay gap.
In a tour de force performance from Patricia Clarkson and John Benjamin Hickey, “Lilly” portrays the journey of Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama factory supervisor who fights from the tire manufacturing floor to the Supreme Court when she discovers her company has been paying her half of what her male counterparts received for 20 years. She never gave up, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law in 2009.
Award-winning documentarian Kim A. Snyder collaborates with Samantha Fuentes, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in “Death by Numbers.” Fuentes, now a film student, writes the story, vividly portraying the emotional and physical trauma of being shot that day — she still has bullet shrapnel permanently embedded in her legs and behind her right eye. The film is a testimony to her strength to find a path to empowerment and face her would-be murderer.
Each of these films demonstrates that it is easier to dismiss others when you are not looking at them in their face and hearing vividly about their lives and traumas. Laws, policies, and beliefs in the abstract about issues like abortion, responsible gun laws, and equal pay are easier to defend sitting on the couch or scrolling through social media than when you are looking at a woman who has lost her fertility because she sat in an ER until she was about to die from sepsis, or a teenager describing what it felt like to be shot with an AR-15.
It can feel like instead of making forward progress, we are being forced backward. What would politicians and judges think about their positions and rulings if it was their loved one bleeding out in a parking lot of a hospital from a miscarriage, unable to get help, or their child whose small body was torn apart by a barrage of bullets from a weapon designed for war, or trying to navigate their personal and professional life where every woman had a “day off.”
A main culprit of this is how people consume information from non-fact-checked, confirmation-biased, misinformed sources. Ethical journalists know that the gold standard of a source is first-person. The power of “I” is paramount, and these women speak truth to power. You cannot look at them on the screen and not feel their pain and their power.
So, what can we do as women who care about other women? One line of hope is the meeting of different generations. In “The Last of the Sea Women,” we meet the haenyeo divers of South Korea, women free divers who descend to the depths of the sea without oxygen to forage for seafood. Many up into their eighties face a threat to their livelihood from the changing climate and the modern world. It is a group of young women who are social media influencers who come in to shine a light on their ancestral skills and help fight for the future.
Ultimately, the women in these films are all profiles of courage, and if they won’t give up the fight, neither should we.
