Girls & Gods

What I rediscover in Girls & Gods is the extent to which patriarchy and the systemic violence perpetrated by men against women cannot be reduced to a so-called “masculine nature.” The film highlights the power of religious cultures in constructing and perpetuating these power dynamics.

The screenwriter-turned-investigator, Ukrainian activist Inna Shevchenko, steps outside her own sphere of activism to open herself to dialogue with women of different allegiances, from Copenhagen to New York. She is interested in their strategies, their forms of resistance, their reinterpretations of sacred texts, but also in the ways they embrace, negotiate, or transform the norms that shape their lives.

I found myself clinging to the words of a song that runs like a thread throughout the film — Mi cuerpo es mi casa, mi casa es mi cuerpo — as if to a lifeline against this biopower. When freedom is experienced as a form of submission, or as the price to pay to feel safe in one’s own body, and when the body itself becomes the object of a compromise, it all remains profoundly dizzying.

Girls & Gods is one of those films that brings me closer to women, whoever they may be, and that will always make me feel like a stranger to their gods.

Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker