Kino Kosova, 20.–24.9.2023

Stuntwomen + Q&A

Director	Elena Avdija
Duration	84 min
Language	OV French \| English \| Swiss - German \| d
Genre	Documentary
Cast	Virginie Arnaud, Petra Sprecher, Estelle Piget
Country	Switzerland, France
Year	2022
Distributor	Bande à part Films

Synopsis

Virginie, Petra and Estelle are stuntwomen. They put their bodies in danger to serve the violent imagination of a cinema which shows women no mercy.

Stuntwomen turns the camera towards those figures in the shadows who act being hit, killed or raped as dictated by the screenplay. This film interrogates our relationship with the portrayal of sexist violence in film and television. In moving away from the set and entering the private lives of these three protagonists, the film dedramatises the spectacular and becomes an action film of the intimate.

Official trailer

Biography

Born in 1987, Elena Avdija has a degree in Sociology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris.
After doing a Masters in documentary filmmaking at INA, she worked as an Assistant Director developing scripts for history documentaries, mainly for Point du Jour and Arte in Paris.
Returning to Switzerland, she specialised in the casting of extras and bit parts for series and feature films. This part of her work bears witness to her interest for the jobs that evolve in the shadows of the film industry.
Elena has also produced and directed two short documen- taries, D’ici ou de là-bas ? (From here or from there?) (2013) and Option : théâtre ! (2017). Stuntwomen is her first feature length documentary.