SYNOPSIS
Set in France's Cévennes region, this film weaves stories from different eras into a single narrative. It begins with a 16th-century peasant women's revolt against the privatization of common land. Centuries later, the same forest is a surveilled development site. When wild boars breach its fences, human-centered boundaries are shaken. Through long, observant takes and a focus on non-verbal presence, the film poetically contemplates the porous lines between forest, human, and animal, posing an ecofeminist inquiry into coexistence and resistance against capital and patriarchy.
REVIEW
A hybrid of documentary and fiction, She Boars is driven by a bold imagination that bridges disparate times and subjects. In her debut feature, director Elsa Brès entwines two parallel stories of rebellion: the 16th-century peasant women who rose up against the enclosure of common lands, and the wild boars of today that trespass into privatized forests. Watching over this contested space at night is Annie, a solitary security guard who becomes the film’s quiet anchor.
Structured in three parts, the film layers the historical women’s uprisings with the animals’ contemporary acts of defiance, revealing the intertwined roots of patriarchy, capitalism, and privatization. To dismantle such entrenched systems, it suggests, requires breaking away from linear, human-centered modes of thought and surveillance, and cultivating a renewed sense of history alongside new possibilities for coexistence.
Through its open narrative form, moving fluidly between fiction and non-fiction, She Boars invites viewers into the forest as a reimagined space for women, animals, and nature. Its intricate mise-en-scène and tactile forms of communication convey meaning more through gesture than language. The result is a rigorous cinematic experiment that offers both critical and creative reflection on the enduring cycles of surveillance and resistance, oppression and solidarity.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
In the heart of a Cévennes forest, different temporalities intertwine: from the defense of communal lands in the 16th century to the privatized forest of today, a story takes shape, in search of what we have in common. Taking a feminist approach to the figure of the wild boar and the history of private property, She Boars explores the strata’s of the landscape to uncover stories of resistance from the past and to come.
