Women (2019)

Directed by: Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Anastasia Mikova | 105 minutes | documentary

Yann Arthus-Bertrand (1946) is a world-renowned French photographer, who built a reputation in particular for his fantastic and revolutionary aerial photographs and who, since 2006, has also been making documentary films and series. A pure nature lover and passionate ecological activist, who wants to show the beauty and fragility of the earth to a large audience with his work. But Arthus-Bertrand’s love for the world goes beyond nature alone; he also loves humanity in all its diversity. He demonstrated this in the documentary ‘Human’ (2015), an impressive and voluminous project for which the Frenchman, together with his much younger Ukrainian-French assistant Anastasia Mikova (1982), interviewed people from all over the world about life and culture for three years. being human. Themes such as poverty, war, religion and racism were discussed. All those stories were skilfully processed in a documentary that lasts more than three hours, full of small, moving portraits, which, despite the long running time, is never boring. Arthus-Bertrand and Mikova (now ‘promoted’ to co-directors) once again demonstrate this fine piece of craftsmanship with the film ‘Woman’ (2019), in which they pay tribute to women, their femininity and being a woman. The starting point here is: what does it mean to be a woman? How do women relate in a mainly male-dominated world? Of course it makes a big difference whether you come from the Middle East, Africa or South America, for example, or from Europe or North America, but all those women – wherever they come from – look more alike than you might at first glance. would think.

No fewer than 2,000 women from fifty different countries were interviewed for this documentary. The fact that women play the leading role in this film is mainly due to Mikova, who during the making of ‘Human’ saw men stepping forward en masse to tell their story, while women were much more hesitant and suspicious. “But once they got in front of the camera, it seemed like they’d been waiting their whole lives for that moment.” Arthus-Bertrand and Mikova felt a strong need to give women the stage they wanted. They no longer have to be silent because the men around them tell them to. The women in ‘Woman’ are therefore surprisingly candid, also about intimate subjects such as menstruation and sexuality. They come from far and wide, from different cultures, all look different and represent different age groups. Nevertheless, they all have in common that they know what it’s like to be a woman, which is what it takes. That men sometimes want to see you as the weak and vulnerable sex and take advantage of that; how can you protect yourself against that? Very sad stories are told, of women who have been doused with acid by a relative, women who have been trafficked, raped or tortured. Women who have been systematically abused. Women who feel sadness because they cannot become mothers, were forced to have an abortion or were not able and allowed to make their own choices in life. Women who were belittled or discriminated against because of their femaleness, and as a result were not given a fair chance in their career or were not even allowed to go to school at all. Women in whom you can read pain on their faces, but who finally get the chance or have the guts to tell their story. They are stories that make a deep impression because they are taken from life. Especially if you are a woman yourself, they come in hard (even if you come from a completely different culture than the woman in question). But for men, this film should also be required reading, so that they can better understand and value their wives if they haven’t already.

Such an enumeration of tragic life stories suggests that ‘Woman’ is very heavy and gloomy, but this documentary is far from that. Enough time is set aside for cheerful, light-hearted stories. The joy around the first period, for example, or the escapades between the sheets, cause a lot of hilarity. Women who have found a way to stand up for themselves, who dare to show their pride and who radiate a zest for life ensure that the balance does not tip too much towards tragedy. Which is also a relief: all these women are real. They are not smoothed over fashion dolls but women with real female bodies full of imperfections. A number of them also dare to literally expose themselves, in images specially shot by fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh. It is precisely the fact that they adopt a vulnerable position that makes them strong and tough. And that goes for all the women in ‘Woman’; together they step forward on behalf of the female sex. No matter how different they are. Arthus-Bertrand and Mikova have found a nice way to give them full attention. An even, dark background and the focus completely on the woman’s face. Here and there the ‘talking heads’ are interspersed with a series of short-range shots of women in their daily habitat, but even then our attention is always focused on the woman. ‘Woman’ puts the ‘ordinary’ woman on a pedestal, to show that she is not ‘normal’ at all, but very special in her own way. An impressive and moving tribute to the female part of the world population that unfortunately still remains underexposed in many countries and cultures, but really deserves its place in the spotlight.