METAMORPHOSIS (2006)
Documentary
58 minutes
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.
PRESS & REVIEWS
Aviva Lori, Haaretz - Coming out of the shadows
FESTIVALS
2006 | Volgin Competition, Jerusalem International Film Festival | Israel
2007 | Special Screening, UN Convention on the Status of Women
2007 | SIWFF International Women Film Festival | Seoul, Korea
2007 | SPLIT International New Film Festival | Croatia
2007 | Filmmore International Women Film Festival | Istanbul, Turkey
2008 | CineFest International Film Festival | Hungary
2008 | Hamburg International Film Festival (IKFF) | Germany
2008 | Shanghai International Television Festival | China
2009 | Istanbul International Documentary Film Festival | Turkey
2011 | CULTURESCAPES International Art Festival | Basel, Switzerland
2012 | WMWFF International Women Film Festival | Taiwan
CAST & CREW
Director: Netalie Braun
Producer: Claudia Levin
Cinematography: Nili Asslan, Avigail Sperber
Music: Chen Wagner
Supported by The New Fund for Cinema and Television
Broadcast on Channel 1, Israel’s former public broadcaster