Paris (AFP)
"Everything that is intimate is political," says director Ovidie who, after documentaries on the porn industry and the fight against prostitution in Sweden, has focused on obstetric violence, a topic you long .
In "You will give birth in pain" broadcast Tuesday at 22:40 on Arte and available in retrospect, she accumulates chilling testimonies of mothers - including Secretary of State Marlene Schiappa - traumatized by their delivery, between brutal examinations, medical gestures lived as a "mutilation" and misplaced words.
"I've been working for a long time on issues of sexuality, body and intimacy and I wanted to work on this issue, it's the part of feminism that has always interested me," says the thirty-something including the documentary "Where whores do not exist" on the Swedish model of prostitution had been noticed.
For Ovidie, this documentary is the "logical continuation" of his previous work, and speaks above all of "consent", a theme highlighted with the #MeToo movement.
The issue of obstetric violence has entered the public debate through blogs and social networks, before being the subject in France of a report a year ago of the High Council for Equality between Women and Women. men (HCE), calling for "awareness".
Among the main acts denounced, the non-consensual use of episiotomy (incision of the perineum to allow the baby to pass) was singled out. In France, nearly one out of five births gives rise to an episiotomy, and in one out of two cases, the woman deplores the lack of information, stressed the HCE.
"For a long time, childbirth was the big forgotten thing in history, since the 1960s the emergency was contraception and then abortion, and there was less time and interest in feminist movements for these fights. -which could have been interpreted as natalist, "says Ovidie.
She started working on this topic two years ago, before it became prominent in the media and made a point of meeting all the parties on this sensitive issue: activists like the Belgian feminist Marie-Hélène Lahaye (who launched in 2013 the blog "Marie gives birth") and doctors including Israel Nisand, head of the French National College of Gynecologists.
Months of investigation and interview that have brought to light "around the same time" a global advocacy movement, particularly in "Catholic countries".
© 2019 AFP