The documentary SHE, directed by Parsifal Reparato, will have its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival, in the prestigious Semaine de la Critique section. The screening is scheduled for 9 August at “La Sala”, with an encore on 10 August at the PalaCinema. Cinematography by Lorenzo Casadio CCS – our warm congratulations to him!
Produced between Italy and France, SHE is the result of four years of extensive fieldwork and a collaboration between the production companies AntropicA, PFA Films, Les Films de l’Oeil Sauvage and Luce Cinecittà. International sales are handled by CAT&Docs, which has described the film as “an artistic work addressing a crucial social issue, with the power to resonate globally and question the very foundations of the world economy.” In Italy, distribution will be managed by AntropicA and PFA Films, while in France it will be overseen by Les Films de l’Oeil Sauvage.
Set in the industrial province of Bac Ninh, Vietnam, the film explores the condition of female workers employed in one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturing parks. Here, around 100,000 labourers – 80% of whom are women – work in 12-hour shifts within a system that erases individual identity and reduces the body to a purely productive function. The documentary focuses on these women, on their forced anonymity, but also on their resilience. Through a narrative device that alternates black-and-white footage from inside the factory with vivid, colour performative sequences, Reparato constructs a symbolic space removed from production, where the workers collectively stage their own condition.
“SHE is a film about hidden resistance, about the right to exist as people, not just as a workforce,” says Parsifal Reparato. “The female workers collectively staged what happens inside the factory. Together, we created a time and space different from that imposed by production – a space to express themselves, to tell their story through the body.”
The selection of SHE at the Locarno Film Festival – one of the most important international events for auteur cinema – marks a significant recognition for a form of documentary filmmaking that adopts a rigorous language, far from reportage and explanatory approaches, and instead relies on the symbolic power of gesture and visual composition. A radical work, yet one capable of speaking to a wide audience, crossing cultural and geographical boundaries.
AS TOLD TO US BY LORENZO CASADIO
SHE is a documentary that tells the stories of lives connected to one of the largest industrial complexes in Vietnam – a major global electronics production hub. Here, the screens of smartphones sold and used daily around the world are manufactured. It is mostly women, coming from various regions of Vietnam and driven by necessity, who seek work in these factories.
Parsifal Reparato, the film’s director, has been following some of these stories for several years, seeking to give voice to the dreams, hopes, but also the frustrations and deep contradictions that shape the lives of these women. SHE is a collective film, in which the stories of many workers and former workers intertwine, revealing the alienating rhythms of factory labour, the constant surveillance by the company, the sense of isolation, the distance from their families, and the suspended expectations of a generation of young working women.
As cinematographer, I joined the project only during the final trip and had to work within a narrative framework that was already structured – albeit experimental – with several interviews, “cover shots”, and the concept of a performative workshop in which the factory workers used their bodies to show us what they experience every day inside the factory, where filming was not permitted.
For this workshop, we aimed to distinguish between two moments: the performance itself, in which the workers re-enacted their daily tasks in the factory, and another in-between phase where, between one scene and the next, they were free to express themselves however they wished – physically or verbally – allowing us to blend and contrast reality with its just-concluded representation. In this more open phase, handheld camera work was consistent with other parts of the film: always very close to the women and, in a way, “involved” in the scene. For the re-enactment phase, however, we chose to evoke the sense of surveillance that the women experience during their twelve-hour shifts by using multiple cameras and predominantly overhead shots, mimicking the perspective of security cameras. In this case, the presence of the cameras is strongly felt. We were interested in placing the audience in the position of the company’s surveillance over the workers, who appear almost crushed within the various frames.
Another aspect we wanted to explore further involved some of the stories within the collective narrative, using a more intimate form of storytelling. However, several of the protagonists – those still working in the factory – asked not to be filmed in a way that showed their faces, in order to avoid possible retaliation from the company. This was a constant but very stimulating challenge for us: we had to work carefully on the framing to respect their request while still finding visually effective cinematic solutions. For other characters, such as Tù and Mai Hien, who no longer work in the factory, and for the only male character, Dat, we didn’t have this issue and were able to adopt a more “classic” approach. We chose to work with a single lens, the 35mm, and a handheld style that always stayed very close to the protagonists and the action in general, aiming for that right distance that would allow us not to be invasive, yet always remain by their side. The result was some truly beautiful scenes, to which I feel deeply connected.
As for the lighting, I tried to work primarily with natural light and, in situations where that wasn’t possible, to light discreetly—using sources that respected the original atmosphere of the location while still allowing us to achieve a suitable aperture level and a cinematic look we felt satisfied with. In some locations, such as the hospital, we worked by subtraction: turning off only certain lights while keeping the environment as natural as possible.
I believe the beauty of this film lies precisely in its aesthetic and narrative experimentation—a mode that allowed us to tell a collective story which may seem distant, but in reality, concerns us all closely.
