| No events for Brave Miss World | |||||||||||
About The FilmJust before being crowned 1998 Miss World, Miss Israel Linor Abargil was raped at knifepoint. Now she’s an inspiring activist breaking silence, fighting for justice and global awareness. In 1998, beautiful eighteen-year-old Abargil was kidnaped, stabbed, and raped in Milan. Just six weeks later, she won the Miss World crown. Since then, she has refused to submit to the shaming silence that surrounds the subject of rape. She travels the world to elicit the testimony of violated women (American college students, young South Africans, Joan Collins, and Fran Drescher, among many others); established a website where victims can share their stories; and became an attorney. Now, after having fought to bring her attacker (a serial rapist) to justice, he becomes eligible for parole, and she has to hunt down his previous victims in order to help keep him behind bars. All of this, including returning to Italy for the first time since the attack, takes its toll on the tough but vulnerable activist, and her trauma begins to resurface. Moreover, the once-model, beauty queen, and actress also becomes increasingly religious and modest in her appearance. Made over the course of five years, this uplifting documentary is a compelling portrait of an articulate, inspiring crusader for justice who refuses to internalize victimhood and fights to break the silence hanging over this terrible crime. Guest Speakers
Inbal B. Lessner - (Producer/Editor) recently did additional editing on Davis Guggenheim's Teach, a 2-hour documentary special for CBS. In 2007, she edited and co-produced the internationally acclaimed I Have Never Forgotten You about Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, a Special Selection of the 2007 Berlinale, Vienalle, Jerusalem, and Tribeca Film Festivals. The documentary won several awards and is being distributed by the U.S. State Department in 12 languages. Early this year, Inbal completed Brave Miss World, an independent documentary she produced and edited about the global epidemic of rape, directed by Cecilia Peck (Shut Up & Sing, A Conversation with Gregory Peck.) The film won grants from Women In Film, Fledgling Fund, Kroll Documentary Fund and Artemis Rising Foundation. Brave Miss World was selected to AFI Silverdocs and was screened to members of U.S. Congress in June 2013. Inbal began making films when she was in high school and later produced training films for the Israeli Defense Forces. At NYU, she was the recipient of the prestigious, merit-based, WTC Johnson Fellowship, a full tuition fellowship awarded to one undergraduate filmmaker a year. Since graduating with honors and moving to Los Angeles, Inbal has edited hundreds of hours of non-scripted network & cable television shows, ranging from Sundance Channel's award-winning docu-series Transgeneration and Showtime's "American Candidate" directed by R.J. Cutler. She also directed Night Bites, a docudrama for the Women’s Entertainment Network, was second-unit producer on the HBO/ARTE documentary Watermarks about the women swimmers of the pre-WWII Hakoach Vienna Jewish athletic club, and was an editing consultant on the PBS Emmy-winner Be Good, Smile Pretty. Other credits include editing A Whisper to a Roar (feature doc about Democracy activists in 5 countries,) If I Die Tonight (feature doc about police brutality), Shock Act, about a death row experiment (Best Narrative Short winner at Tribeca and Chicago film festivals), and the independent feature The Elephant King starring Ellen Burstyn.
Sponsor:
Community Partners:
| |||||||||||
