º»¹® ¹Ù·Î°¡±â ¸Þ´º ¹Ù·Î°¡±â

15th DMZ Docs(2023)

I AM DOCU



Our Body

Claire SIMON

  • France
  • 2023
  • 169min
  • DCP
  • color

Korean Premiere

Synopsis

In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women¡¯s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself. 

Review

 Hospitals are spaces where individual bodies become public subjects. The unique stories of each body are diagnosed, categorized, treated, and reported within these institutional settings. Our Body gazes at this institutional space, providing an intellectual yet empathetic documentary that illuminates the areas excluded by the binaries of tradition. Claire Simon's camera remains within the maternity ward of a hospital in Paris, capturing the intimate conversations and emotional flows among individuals within a specific social environment. The subjects are diverse: from a teenage girl facing an unintended pregnancy, couples undergoing fertility treatments, transgender individuals needing hormone prescriptions, mothers and fathers in the delivery room, patients suffering from female ailments, and medical staff, to women protesting medical violence outside the hospital. Interestingly, the scenes captured through an observant approach lead the audience into an experience akin to engaging in conversations with the subjects. Then, unexpectedly, in the latter part of the film, an unforeseen figure appears before the camera: Claire Simon herself, who was diagnosed with breast cancer during production. Her presence enhances the film's consistent portrayal of emotional empathy, reaching its climax. The film presents a new path, neither mystifying women's bodies to hide them in private domains nor objectifying them to regulate them in public spaces. The moment the phrase Our Body resonates takes on a profound significance.

Director

  • Claire SIMON

    Claire Simon widely contributed to documentary cinema¡¯s acknowledgment and spreading in France through many films that left a trail in the French cinematographic landscape. Claire Simon¡¯s films reflect the question she never stops asking: what is a story ? What is a story nowadays ? She makes a hero out of anyone she¡¯s filming, whether they are children, a young couple, young teenagers, fifty yeard old lesbian or family planning¡¯s counselors.

Credit