50 minutes / 2005 / Israel / Hebrew

Logline

A hybrid documentary that interweaves four testimonies of rape and incest with rape myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, confronting sexual violence as a cultural structure of power.

Synopsis

Written nearly two thousand years ago, Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains 250 stories of transformation—humans becoming animals, birds, plants, and stones. Fifty of these myths depict rape that results in metamorphosis, embedding sexual violence into one of the foundational texts of Western culture and framing rape as an expression of power between men and women.

Metamorphosis threads this mythic archive together with four contemporary testimonies from women who survived rape or incest. Moving between ancient narratives and lived experience, the film insists on telling the story “from the inside”: making space for a testimony that is difficult to hear, that refuses aesthetic comfort, and that exposes the irreversible bodily and psychological changes carried by survivors.

Two millennia after Ovid, the film argues, the silencing continues—women still mute their voices, and society still fails to recognize that these stories must be heard loudly enough to dismantle the rotten foundations of gendered power.

Festivals & Awards (as listed):

• Israel’s Women Film Festival, Rehovot — 2006

• Seoul International Women’s Film Festival — 2007

• Screening at the United Nations Building, New York — as part of an international gathering marking the opening of International Women’s Month in the U.S., March 1, 2007

Credits (as listed):

• Director: Netalie Braun

• Producer: Claudia Levin

• Cinematography: Nili Asslan

• Music: Chen Wagner

• Supporting body: The New Fund for Cinema and Television

• Language: Hebrew

• Subtitles: English

• Runtime: 50 minutes