Happening

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child.<br /><br />This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.<br /><br />In <em>Happening</em>, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.<br /><br /><strong>Now an award-winning film by Audrey Diwan</strong><br /><br /><strong>Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival<br /><br />Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival</strong>