the rights stuff
The first moment Audrey Diwan sensed the impact of her new movie Happening, she was lying in bed. The film, a 1960s-set French drama about a young student seeking an abortion, had just screened at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021. Then she got an email from a female journalist who’d just seen it. “I had a message that said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I fainted!’ That was a very interesting first reaction! Honestly, I don’t want people to faint, but I was quite happy because I thought, ‘OK, she really got what I’m trying to do here.’”
She wasn’t the only one. Just a few days later, was awarded Venice’s Golden Lion by a jury led by director Bong Joon-ho (which, along with wins for female filmmakers in Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance, makes it the first time ever that the top festival prizes are all held by women). If it was a surprise, and was certainly not the highest-profile movie on the Lido – it couldn’t have been better timed.
