Our Body

Claire Simon / France / 2023 / Czech Premiere / 168 min.

synopsis

The hardest part is capturing the pain, says documentary filmmaker Claire Simon, who filmed a nearly three-hour fresco about coping with womanhood in the gynaecology ward of the Tenon clinic in Paris. In the surgical theatre and in the consulting room, she searches for the right words and images to capture the intimacy of people's bodies and souls during childbirth, a diagnosis of a malignant disease or a sex change. With disarming empathy, she portrays the ritual cyclical nature of life's turning points and captures one of the most beautiful scenes of anesthesia, one that touches her more than she expected before the filming began.

“The whole film is about language and the body. The way you name the body is half of the pain.”

Quote source: Film Comment.

biography

Claire Simon (1955), a British cinematographer and documentary filmmaker who lives and works in France, began filming in the 1980s. She made her feature debut A Foreign Body in 1997. Since then, she has collected numerous awards at major festivals. Our Body competed for Best Documentary Award at the Berlinale.