_{Look What You Made Me Do by Coco Schrijber}

Early on in Coco Schrijber’s new feature documentary Look What You Made Me Do (a world premiere in IDFA’s Masters), male passers-by in a busy town are handed rolled-up pieces of paper. They unfurl the documents and read what is written on them: ‘every year about 30,000 women worldwide are killed by their partners,’ they read.

Schrijber is looking at the grim subject of femicide and in her film she interviews women who survived abusive relationships by turning the tables on their male partners. These are women who turned to murder to escape their nightmare. Finnish Laura, Dutch Rachel and Rosalba from Italy explain both how and why they killed their partners.

The Dutch director begins the documentary with footage of a man and woman, both naked, fighting in the snow, both eventually bleeding. “I wanted to open the film with something really in your face and that will startle you because domestic violence is also a very unexpected feeling,” she explains the sequence. “You don’t expect the one that you love and who loves you to lash out at you.”

She was trying to capture that feeling of sudden panic when there is no time to think or react - and when all you can do is “duck for cover.” The female actor later told Schrijber that she had a very violent husband and had recently moved out of their home. Other people she met, including a female taxi driver who is featured in the documentary, all had similar stories of violence and abuse.

“I have no history of violence in my family and my relationships,” Schrijber dismisses the idea she is drawing on her own experiences. Nonetheless, she was driven to make her movie by “the astonishing amount of women who are killed every year by their partners.” She couldn’t help but ask herself why no-one was protesting about this wave of violence which has been going on for years. “Why aren’t we all going out on the streets? We see it round us, we read about it but it just keeps on going. Nothing ever changes.”

For decades, the number of women killed within abusive relationships has stayed at roughly the same figure. Schrijber was angry and upset that society seemed to accept the killings. She was therefore intrigued by the stories of Laura, Rachel and Rosalba who took matters into their own hands.

“Another thing that was a trigger was that this psychiatrist I knew in Mexico told me, when we were having tea, that women kill differently…”

In her documentary, one of Schrijber’s subjects explains at great length how she put poison in the meatballs she later fed her abusive partner. “I had never even thought about it but, of course, women don’t even have the strength to strike a blow and kill someone or strangle somebody. They have to be far more intelligent about it. They have to come up with something [different] to survive.”

Schrijber uses art history to cast new light on her subject. In particular, she concentrates on the story of Artemisia Gentileschi, the 16th century Italian baroque painter who was herself the victim of secular violence and whose best-known works include the epic painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes.

“When I looked at all the paintings of women throughout history, I thought… why are all the women passive? Why are they lying on couches or bathing or staring out of the window [looking] very beautiful. I didn’t recognise myself in that image. I don’t lie on the couch all day with my hair draped over the armchair waiting for my husband to come home,” Schrijber says. “Real women act,” she continues, “They have jobs; they do things.”

Artemisia’s painting fascinated her. She liked the movement in the painting. The female killer is shown as “really going at it” and releasing her anger.

“I thought I don’t particularly want to make a film about women killing… but I want to make a film about women’s rage and how it is suppressed,” Schrijber states her intentions.

There are some gory moments in the documentary. We see crime cleaners in white suits cleaning up the blood after a violent attack in a beautiful home clearly belonging to a wealthy family. (This is staged but Schrijber was using real crime cleaners. She wanted to make the point that femicide happens at every level of society). There is also horrific CCTV surveillance footage which the director found on YouTube of a man killing his partner and then disposing of her body.

Schrijber doesn’t see Look What You Make Me Do as a feminist film or as a true crime doc. Her intention is to draw attention to the topic of domestic violence. She is known for the “unexpected” perspectives from which she tackles her stories.

“I was afraid the film would be taken hostage by a lot of feminist film festivals. I didn’t want that because it [domestic violence] is a problem of men and women,” the director says.

Look What You Make Me Do, produced through Witfilm, will be released in Dutch cinemas shortly after IDFA on 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It is being distributed in the Netherlands by Periscoop. CAT&Docs are handling world sales. It is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Film Production Incentive.
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