WOMEN ARE HEROES

Directed by JR

SYNOPSIS

The film Women Are Heroes transports you to Africa, Asia and South America. French artist JR takes you to places you may fantasize or hear about on television when some dramatic event occurs, but which are far from the usual touristic spots. Working undercover, he transforms streets, buildings, shantytowns, favelas and entire villages into art galleries, forcing viewers to see art that they might not otherwise encounter. His motive for taking us so far afield is to raise some fundamental issues. They are generous women who own nothing, but are willing to share, women who have painful pasts and want to build bright futures. Searching for what is common in their gaze, we come closer to what is universal: the human factor. As a contemporary artist who grew up with Internet and digital images, JR experiments different cinematographic techniques and creates his own way to tell stories.

2010 /// France /// French /Portuguese/English/Thai/Indie /// Documentary Film /// 85’

WRITERS JR, Emile ABINAL /// EDITOR Hervé SCHNEID (Mesrine, Amelie) /// MUSIC MASSIVE ATTACK, PATRICE, Jean-Gabriel BECKER, OUTLINES /// SOUND Philippe WELSH, Marco CASANOVA, Jérôme GONTHIER, François-Joseph HORS /// IMAGE Patrick GHIRINGHELLI, JR, Dan LOWE & Anthony DICKENSON (Time Lapse Brazil) /// DIRECTOR OF POST-PRODUCTION Mélanie KARLIN /// DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION François HAMEL /// PRODUCTION COMPANY 27.11 PRODUCTION /// PRODUCERS Juliette FAVREUL RENAUD, Agathe SOFER /// CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES 27.11 PRODUCTION, ARTE FRANCE Cinéma, DUM DUM FILMS, SOCIAL ANIMALS, STUDIO 37 /// WITH PARTICIPATION OF Canal +, ARTE FRANCE /// FRENCH DISTRIBUTION REZO FILMS, STUDIO 37///

CHECK IMAGES + VIDEOS www.jr-art.net /// http://28millimetres.com/women

DIRECTOR’s NOTE

The film Women Are Heroes enables me to keep the promise I made to the women who participated in the project “to take their story around the world”. This is what they asked me in the shantytown of Kibera as well as in the favela of Morro da Providencia.
With my film, I wanted to pay tribute to women whose dignity is underlined by posting their portraits on the walls of their village and of the whole world. When I met them, women expressed their difficulties in a world dominated by men. In front of the camera, they shared their nightmares, but they also offered their joy and their energy …

Women Are Heroes has been filmed in places only featured by the media when « an event » happens. When I went there, it was not to amplify the message of the media, nor to  contradict it, but to show a reality hidden by the outlook for something sensational. And it is in the context of an ignored normality that the women of these places take the initiative and invite the media to show what they have built, not what they have suffered.