She Boars

In the 16th century, in a forest in the Cévennes in France, peasant women from many regions band together to fight the enclosure of common lands. A few centuries later, construction in the forest is under the watchful eye of Annie, a solitary 75-year-old night watchwoman. One night, the landscape is turned upside down.

What kinds of imaginary and historical resistance run through and link up the different temporalities of a region? In her first feature-length documentary, whose title is inspired by Monique Wittig’ Guérillères, Elsa Brès explores the tales and collective struggles that irrigate the Cévennes landscape, continuing a reflection begun in her installations and previous films.
In three parts, She Boars opens with the 16th-century revolt of a group of peasant women demanding the free use of pastureland and forests. Swiftly quashed, this uprising resonates with another form of contemporary resistance led by the wild boar that are still defying a privatised forest now riddled with surveillance cameras. The animal’s intrusion onto a worksite that is nibbling away at the once open space begins to disrupt the daily life of 75-year-old Annie, who shares her time between working the land and her caretaking job. Her gaze and curiosity are piqued as the film shifts towards an exploration of the forest through a new and not exclusively anthropocentric prism.
Devoid of dialogues and giving room for a sensory experience, the mise en scène centres on the lush vegetation and the bodies that live there, weaving a narrative where humans and animals join together to combat capitalism and patriarchy. By opening breaches in time, possible continuities take shape between the struggles of yesterday and those of today, inviting us to imagine other ways of inhabiting the world.

Nepheli Gambade