– French filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé’s debut documentary follows a fierce protagonist helping pregnant women in Venezuela’s failed health system
French journalist and filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé spent ten years covering social and political events in Latin America, and has now directed her first feature-length documentary, The Cord [+see also:
interview: Nolwenn Hervé
film profile], which has its world premiere at CPH:DOX and receive a special mention in the DOX:AWARD competition. Set in Venezuela, the film examines the country’s failing public health system through the story of Carolina, a middle-aged activist helping pregnant women.
The film opens on Lake Maracaibo, with oil rigs bobbing in the water, accompanied by title cards explaining how Venezuela was once a prosperous country reliant on its oil reserves, but is now a nation where healthcare is little more than a distant memory. The camera then pans over a series of dilapidated mansions, pointing to the country’s economic ruination over the past decade, brought about by a combination of economic sanctions and political turmoil.
Most of the film takes place in a car, with Carolina and her trusted assistant and driver, Yanni, picking up pregnant women and trying to secure them basic healthcare. Public hospitals are understaffed and underequipped, and will not admit patients unless they bring their own supplies – from surgical gloves and syringes to fentanyl, blood bags and saline solution. Carolina’s own daughter is pregnant (her husband has just moved to the US, like most of the country’s experienced doctors), and a private plan would cost $700. The minimum wage in Venezuela is roughly €3.5 a month.
Carolina drives pregnant women from hospital to hospital and from pharmacy to pharmacy, as well as to private donors and NGOs (she herself runs a foundation, collecting money and other forms of aid). It is always a race against time: while each case differs, the women and their unborn babies are invariably in mortal danger. She also drives around the city after getting a donation, asking random women on the street if they want intrauterine devices installed and crowding them in her car.
Throughout, Carolina’s spirit appears indomitable. A former gang leader (which she talks about openly), she is headstrong and provocative – especially when a little drunk, as in the aftermath of a surreal beauty pageant for pre-adolescent girls – yet always supportive, with remarkable emotional strength. But even she breaks down into tears after a woman’s child dies in the womb, having not been admitted by any doctor for two weeks. She stages a protest at the hospital, and journalists eventually arrive – only one actually, but the word will get out, bolstered by her foundation’s constant social media activity.
Hervé shot both the images and sound herself, from the passenger seat of Carolina’s car or on foot, and the material has a sense of raw intimacy and immediacy. Edited by Rafael Torres Calderón, the film is dense and dynamic, leaving little room for the music score. Two calm scenes on Lake Maracaibo provide some respite from the constant race, but even these feel barely accommodated within the 99-minute running time.
Simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring, and driven by a force-of-nature protagonist, the film also succeeds in transcending its micro-view to open out onto the bigger picture: details of the social, political and historical context are not spelt out, but emerge through the characters and events. The historical dimension is reflected in the beautiful ending, which involves a native midwife with ancestral knowledge from Carolina’s own Indigenous Wayuu heritage – and which connects directly to the film’s title.
The Cord was produced by France’s Grande Ourse Films.
