CAT&Docs has taken on international sales for Parsifal Reparato’s choral narrative She which will receive its world premiere as part of this year’s Critics Week at the Locarno Film Festival. The company has granted BDE exclusive access to a key preview scene in advance of the film’s August 9 screening.
She gives voice to some of the 80,000 workers in one of the largest electronic industrial plants based in Vietnam, the production notes underline. Eighty per cent of the basic workforce are women who have agreed to work 12-hour shifts, day and night. Although each protagonist is different, they are all connected in the exploitation they are subjected to every day.
Director Reparato explains how creating ongoing relationships over four years with the female workers – “who made themselves available, not without sacrifice” – was exhausting.
“But [it] made possible a choral film that brings their voices together” he adds. “Bringing this story of oppression to the West pushed me to research, observe, weave voices and stories against a backdrop of pressure from multinational companies, exerted both on the workers and on local authorities.”
CAT&Docs CEO Catherine Leclef comments: “She embodies everything we love…a highly artistic approach to a major social issue. While the film focuses on the working conditions of female workers in a Vietnamese electronics factory, it resonates globally, questioning the very structure of the global economy.”
Reparato is an Italian director, producer, anthropologist and journalist whose work combines ethnographic research and “a refined cinematic language focused on social justice, labour rights, biodiversity and mental health,” the production notes underline. He previously directed Nimble Fingers. As well as being the founder of the production company AntropicA, he created the Ethnographic Filmmaking Lab, aimed at supporting young filmmakers with the development of documentary projects.
For over 12 years, he has conducted research and worked as a filmmaker across Southeast Asia, focusing on labour-related issues in collaboration with universities, research institutions and workers’ rights organisations.
Italian distribution rights for She are handled by AntropicA and PFA Films, while Les Films de l’oeuil sauvage will distribute the film in France.
