Based on the 2001 memoir by Annie Ernaux, the sophomore feature from director Audrey Diwan charts the harrowing journey of a young woman's struggle to get an abortion in the 1960s, when it was still illegal in France. Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei in a star-making performance) is a gifted, working-class literature student whose life is upended after she discovers she’s pregnant. Now with her academic aspirations in jeopardy and her entire future about to be rewritten, Anne is desperate to resolve the situation before it’s too late, even if it means risking time in prison to do so. Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Happening is a powerful, haunting reminder of a not-so-distant but frighteningly familiar era when a woman’s bodily autonomy was a foreign, punishable concept.