Austin.- ‘Niñas Escarlata’, a documentary that explores abortion and forced motherhood in the Dominican Republic —one of the five Latin American countries that still maintain an absolute ban on the procedure—, premieres this Monday at the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.
The feature film, directed by documentarian Paula Cury, recounts the testimonies of five women on the island, presented anonymously, and the consequences that being forced to give birth or to seek how to have an abortion clandestinely had on their lives.
Despite the criminalization, reinforced last year with the reform of the Penal Code that maintained abortion as a crime, Cury found during the process of making the documentary that many women in the Caribbean country wanted to share their stories.
“We launched an online call inviting women to share testimonies for the documentary and in 24 hours we received more than a hundred responses,” the director said in an interview with EFE. “Many people are going through this type of experience and want to tell their story because they feel they have been forced to remain silent.”
Portraying these realities and “speaking of what cannot be spoken” has also brought a wave of criticism, according to the director, even though the documentary has not yet been released in the Dominican Republic.
“Dominican society is so patriarchal that every time a woman comes out to denounce issues of harassment or lack of reproductive rights, a wave of hate speech falls,” Cury pointed out.
The film therefore seeks to allow women who experience these experiences in solitude to see themselves reflected on screen.
The title, ‘Scarlet Girls’, combines the color —associated with the theme of blood— with the biblical connotation in reference to the adulterous woman, the sinner.
“It’s a connotation that any woman who decides to have an abortion carries; she is a criminal because the law says so. For me, the idea is to reclaim that term and use it symbolically,” said Cury.
After its screening at SXSW, the film will be shown at the Guadalajara Film Festival (Mexico) in mid-April. This is Cury’s first feature film, following his short film ‘A la Deriva’, which won the Best Short Film award at the Rhode Island Film Festival.
SXSW will run until March 18, with an ambitious program that includes more than a hundred musical projects presented in 60 concert halls throughout the city, about 120 feature films —including world premieres— and dozens of short films.
This year’s marks the 40th edition of SXSW, which began in 1987 and attracts thousands of visitors in a mix of established and emerging artists,
along with leaders in the technology sector and the media.
