She They Us - Towards an Equal Future

A series about the hopeful fight for a future where everyone can be equal. Each in their own way, seven people from the Lowlands strive for a world that better suits their well-being, bodies, work and love. We see, among others, musician Charlotte Adigéry, e-sports journalist Eefje 'Sjokz' Depoortere, cultural worker Fatima-Zohra Ait El Maâti, top model Hanne Gaby Odiele, domestic worker Mieke Van Hove, space scientist Angelique Van Ombergen and gender expert Kaouthar Darmoni.

Through five visually surprising and thematic episodes, they show how they deal on a daily basis with discrimination at the intersection of gender, sexuality, skin colour, class and religion. The three young filmmakers Zaïde Bil, Sam Peeters and Heleen Declercq travelled across Europe, the United States and North Africa to line up these fabulous protagonists, two sharing each episode.

• ACCEPTANCE
Hanne Gaby Odiele is an international topmodel. At the age of 17, she discovered being intersex while reading a teenage magazine. Only at that moment she understood the surgeries she had during her childhood. Today she uses her topmodel status to stop cosmetic operations on intersex children.
Charlotte Adigéry is a Belgian singer and musician with Caribbean roots. On the verge of her great breakthrough, she tries to come to terms with racial trauma. To Charlotte as to Hanne, it seems the world cannot accept them for who they are. How to get rid of those concepts of others, that do not serve us?

• SAFETY
Eefje Depoorter is an e-sports journalist for global gaming events like League of Legends. Like so many other women in the gaming industry, she is confronted with online hate speech on a daily basis. Fatima-Zohra Ait El Maâti brings muslim girls in Brussels together to share concerns and problems. Together they build a safe house for their community. Physical abuse at home or in the streets, sexist remarks, direct death threats… are so many ways to silence half of the world’s population. Why can’t the world just simply love us?

• PARENTHOOD
As a space scientist at ESA (European Space Agency), Angelique Van Ombergen strives for more research on the female body in space. Being in a two-mother-family, she has to choose between concentrating on that ambition or on a fertility process?
Musician Charlotte Adigéry couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to have her baby. Desperately looking for other examples in the music industry, she embarks on her first international tour, with her baby. How to follow your ambition and enjoy motherhood at the same time? And who takes charge of the unpaid care work?

• LEGISLATION
In order to tackle feminicide, Amsterdam based Kaouthar Darmoni advocates for changes in criminal law. Gender neutral laws hold in place the world’s blind spots. At the same time, Kaouthar helps women to reset their bodies through Eastern dancing.
Mieke Van Hove is a domestic help. It is one of the few jobs that enable women to combine raising kids with work, especially in a single-parent family. When Mieke sees her colleagues struggle with minimum wages that don’t allow them to pay the bills, she decides to confront the politicians.

• PROTEST
Mieke, Kaouthar, Eefje, Fatima-Zohra, Angelique, Charlotte and Hanne. On a daily basis, they strive for a world that better fits their bodies, work, well-being, love. By lining up their fights, this series aims to make visible how our true power lies in the combination of so many fights. And in the solidarity with men. The fight for equality is for everyone, regardless of gender.

In the series SHE THEY US, each character embraces her/their own interpretation of intersectional feminsim. 'Intersectionality' recognises that everyone experiences their own unique form of discrimination or oppression, involving not only gender but also ethnicity, class, religion, mobility, ... It was therefore crucial to make this series not from the perspective of one director, but through the kaleidoscope of a diverse film team of women and men, and in close collaboration with the protagonists.

Ghent (World Premiere), Oostende