A Dance for Heroes

In 1972, 16-year-old Marie-Claire Chevalier was raped and became pregnant. Helped by her mother to have a clandestine abortion, she was finally denounced and arrested. Both faced imprisonment. Gisèle Halimi, their lawyer, transformed their trial into a historic battle. By denouncing an unjust law, they mobilized public opinion and paved the way for the Veil law, legalizing abortion in France. This forgotten struggle resurfaced almost half a century later, in 2019, when schoolchildren proposed that Marie-Claire be made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, transforming what had long been her shame into a source of pride and a symbol for future generations.

Anthology film. Five heroines from five different, yet similar worlds face social and systematic oppression and injustice. We follow their journeys as they struggle for hope and a better life.

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

Five girls grow up in China during the first years of the twentieth century. When they become adults they have to learn that women are almost without rights. Other women close to them are suppressed in the most brutal way. When Mingtao is to marry a mentally deficient but rich man, she and her friends decide to escape and to search for the mythical "garden" where a woman's life is worth living.

A docu-drama shot in 1970, but not completed until 1973, the film sought to encapsulate in an experimental form issues that were under discussion within the Women’s Liberation Movement at this time and to thus contribute to action for change. In its numerous community screenings, active debate was encouraged as part of the viewing experience.