About the Film
Linor’s Hope:
Since my rape was reported in the international media, wherever I go in the world, for work or otherwise, people approach me and confide that they too were raped, and that I was a role model for them. “You gave us the courage to tell someone, to press charges. You helped us recover.”
The encounters with these women, along with a lot of therapy, have helped me understand how after the trial, I went into hiding. I wanted my privacy, and I couldn’t engage publicly with the issue of rape. But at the same time, I knew that there was a reason for what had happened, and I had an increasing sense of not things not being resolved. I have come to believe that the rape and the spotlight as a Miss World are part of my destiny. I feel compelled to share my story and reach out to millions of women around the world in their painful plight. A plight that in so many cases exceeds my own.
Figures indicate that 80% of rapes are unreported. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of support from a rape victim’s family and friends. I know from experience how alienating it can be. The people closest to a rape victim treat them differently when she needs them the most. Studies also attest that most rape cases occur within the family or by a person whom the victim knew prior to the rape. The law in many countries in the world is not on the side of rape victims, and the sentences for rape and sexual assault are terribly inadequate. Even in progressive nations, rape convictions are rare.
The film is based on my personal story, but also on the reality of the rape of women throughout the world. I had the complete support of my family after being raped, but I know I was very lucky to have had that and it is so often not the case. I will try, during the film, to share how I coped with my own trauma, while reaching out to women around the world and encouraging them to rise up and press charges. To speak out. Not to hold your silence.
During this journey, I will investigate the status of rape in different countries, gather data on the state of legislation in the world and travel with the aim of gathering strength from women in order to make a change, both in legislation and in the world’s awareness of the epidemic of rape and sexual assaults around the world.
Because I believe that the title of Miss World holds a responsibility for social action, I would like to give my crown a personal and meaningful context. I hope to reach women in the fields of politics, economics, entertainment and culture throughout the world, in order to increase awareness and promote legislative change. I will also connect with organizations around the world which deal with rape and sexual assault. My goal in the film would be to increase awareness and create significant change in the perception of rape throughout the world.
I am interested in investigating what leads men to rape women and whether there is hope for prevention. Most significantly, throughout the film, I hope to meet other women who have been raped, those who have spoken but also those who have stayed silent to this very day. I will share my experience, and in doing so try to give others the courage to break their silence. Together we can try to understand what happened to our lives after that trauma, how the course of our lives changed, the self accusation and the fears, and how we can rise up, rehabilitate and take care for ourselves.
-Linor
Shooting begins, Dec. ’08
Update on filming:
The film opens at an international press conference in Tel Aviv, where Linor Abargil, 28, takes the podium and recounts how just weeks prior to winning Miss World 1998, she was the victim of a brutal rape in Milan, Italy which almost took her life. It’s the first time Linor has spoken publicly about her story in ten years. She recounts parts of it in painful detail. Cameras flash and videotape rolls. Some people look away.
Linor announces that the way to combat rape is by speaking out, and fighting the reflex of shame and silence. She thanks her mother, Aliza, sitting front row with her family, for never making her feel like the rape was her fault. The phone call Aliza received from 2000 miles away was any mother’s nightmare, but her clarity and resolve in those first minutes ultimately helped to apprehend and convict the rapist. Aliza told her to not shower, and to go straight to the police, emphasizing “Linor, it’s not your fault.” This statement, as Linor explains, was the beginning of her healing process.
Linor introduces a website where rape survivors can share stories and resources, www.linordocumentary.com. It’s a first step in breaking the silence. She plans to meet with survivors worldwide and encourage them to speak out. She is emphatic about the importance of pressing charges. Linor thanks her mother again at the end of her presentation and hopes that other mothers are listening and will know what to do when their daughters call.
Many in the audience are left in tears and line up to thank Linor for her courage. Her family brims with pride and concern. Her dignified father worries over what bringing this up again will do to his daughter, but Linor is committed and there is no turning back.
Emails and speaking invitations flood Linor’s inbox. The film follows her as she calls women and arranges meetings.
Linor gets ready to begin a journey of speaking at crisis centers and schools, and plans to meet survivors wherever she goes. During the course of the film, she will bond with women and girls coping with the aftermath of stranger rape, domestic rape, date rape, and childhood rape.
Before she leaves Israel, Linor asks her family to help her recall everything they can remember about how her rape affected her life, and theirs. They have never spoken in depth about it before; it was too painful, and they were afraid of upsetting her. The long suppressed details of her story and of how she convicted the serial rapist are gradually revealed, and these scenes, through which we find out how her rape changed her life, and the lives of her mother, father, sister, and brother, are intercut with her encounters with other survivors around the world.
In the U.S., the Cleveland Rape Center invites Linor to be the Keynote Speaker at their 30th Anniversary. Linor breaks down mid-speech describing how isolating rape is, but is lifted by a sisterhood of women who have been through the same. They give her as much support as her presence brings to them.
At Princeton University, Linor meets with student victims. One sophomore reveals that the administration discouraged her from pressing charges against the varsity football player who assaulted her. Linor is upset by the university’s failure to protect her, and by the victim agreeing to keep it quiet. Linor is becoming more aware of the complexities of each case; that not every survivor can tell her family, report the crime, or press charges. She is inspired by the strength of survivors, but discouraged when victims have not sought justice. It’s disheartening.
Linor travels to South Africa, the “Rape Capital of the World”. In Soweto, she visits the Teddy Bear Clinic where the young survivors of rape are overwhelmed that a beautiful Miss World who has been through the same thing, has come to listen. Linor talks to a young gay woman who survived a “corrective rape.” At first Linor isn’t sure what she will have in common with the South African women, but quickly realizes that they not only share the trauma of rape; they share survival, spirituality, and strength. She is helped and inspired by South African survivor Alison, who has transcended a brutal and terrifying rape to become an author and motivating public speaker full of gratitude for life.
Linor is invited by the municipality of Johannesburg to address a congregation of girls and women who have survived rape. She tells them her story, and Aliza publicly gives support to a mother who had been raped and whose young daughter had just been raped also. The grateful audience breaks into soaring African song to thank Linor and Aliza.
The current Miss World Competition is underway in Johannesburg, and while there Linor is invited to perform her original song at the Competition Gala. She first meets with Miss World Organization President, Julia Morley. One question has been on her mind for the past 12 years: Did the voting judges know she had been raped? Julia assures her that no one knew; that Linor stood out and was elected because of her strength and determination. Still, while the Miss World Organization is proud of her, they do not want to give prominence to her issue in the pageant. Linor has hopes of being included in the broadcast, but on the final night she is disappointed when her presence is not acknowledged.
Back in Tel Aviv, Uri Schlomo, the man who raped Linor, is up for parole after serving 10 years of his 16 year sentence. Linor is allowed to present her side in a letter to the Judge, and she writes an impassioned plea to for the rapist to serve out his sentence. As she reads her letter aloud to the victims’ representative in the prison system, she can barely get through describing how the unbearably violent crime has traumatized her life. At the same time she questions why the rapists are allowed to present their case in person at the parole hearings, but the victims are excluded. Linor, now in her second year of law school with the goal of defending victims of rape and sexual assault, has found a law she intends to change. She wants Israeli women to have the same rights as women in the U.S.
On the day of the hearing, Linor and her mother anxiously wait by the phone. When the call finally comes, they learn that the rapist’s lawyers have postponed the hearing. They are preparing a claim of rehabilitation. Linor is skeptical, having found out from the police investigator who worked on her case, that Uri Schlomo had been accused several times before of eerily similar rapes, but the women who pressed charges never had the DNA evidence that Linor had. Linor realizes that she will have to go through the same nerve-wrecking ordeal again soon, and possibly every six months.
Throughout the film, Linor reveals more and more of her rape and what she went through in its aftermath. But the constant strain of reliving her trauma takes a physical and psychological toll. On a trip to Los Angeles she can’t sleep alone and is plagued by nightmares. Linor breaks down on camera and has to seek emergency therapy with a local psychologist. She suffers from exhaustion and anxiety, revealing the cost of this mission and how the trauma of rape is life long.
During the course of filming, we watch Linor turning increasingly toward Orthodox Judaism. She becomes progressively more observant, which adds complexity to her global travels. In South Africa, we see her struggling to find Kosher food, and rushing in Friday afternoon traffic to reach a hotel before sundown so that she can be in walking distance to an event on Shabbat. In a meeting with her Rabbi, she confides her fears about doing the documentary. Is it opening up about her rape and exposing her pain that has caused her to seek the healing strength of a belief system that asks her to cover her body and restrict physical intimacy with men? Some of those closest to Linor wonders whether her growing Orthodox faith will come between them, but observing the rituals of her faith have given her a powerful sense of purpose, and she begins to plan an Orthodox wedding.
Intercut with the scenes of Linor’s journey and her family, are close-ups of survivors, shot with an Interrotron. The women speak directly into the camera lens, creating an intimate connection with the viewer. Some we know from scenes with Linor, others are new to us. The cumulative result of these diverse voices lets us know: the crisis is global and crosses all socioeconomic bounds. These close-up sequences are used to bookend and introduce new themes and questions that get explored in greater detail by Linor and her loved ones.
By the end of the film Linor will return to Italy for the first time since her rape. She will find the young woman who appeared like a guardian angel at the Rome train station and helped her file police and medical reports. These two have not laid eyes on each other in 12 years, but her angel has thought of her every day. Linor will also seek out two women who were also raped by her attacker but unable to convict him due to insufficient evidence – a legal problem throughout the world. With Linor summoning the courage to face the country she has avoided for so long, these scenes promise to be among the most dramatic and emotional of the film, as she confronts the violent attack that transformed her life.
To view a 4-minute trailer please click here
