Happening

• Audrey Diwan
• 100 min
• France
• 2021
• Fiction

With rock-solid concentration and precision, this Golden Lion winner – based on an autobiographical Annie Ernaux novel – portrays abortion with consequences in France in the 1960s.

Anne is an ambitious student with big plans. When she gets pregnant, she sees her opportunity to keep studying and move up in society go up in smoke. Abortion is illegal, but is also the only way out, even if Anne risks prison and her life. Happening is an impressive, painfully focused film that you feel in your whole body. Director Audrey Diwan manages to physically convey the uneasy essence of what the main character, and many along with her, go through. Anamaria Vartolomei, continuously in profile, is nothing else than phenomenal as the unsentimentally decisive Anne. The carefully balanced scenography period markers make the story feel timeless and universal – and it becomes a powerful contribution to the contemporary abortion debate.

- Camilla Larsson

• Drama
• Motstånd
• Omskakande
• Samhälle