Based on Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, this French drama about a young woman’s desperate quest for an illegal abortion in 1960s France is a visceral, unflinching portrait of fear, isolation, and the brutal machinery of oppression. Shot with the urgency of a ticking clock, it feels less like a period piece and more like a scream from the past that echoes terrifyingly into the present.

Anamaria Vartolomei delivers a performance of staggering rawness as Anne, a bright literature student whose future crumbles with a single positive pregnancy test. Diwan’s camera clings to her like a shadow, capturing every tremor of panic, every calculated lie, every degrading encounter with men who exploit her vulnerability. The film’s genius lies in its restraint there are no grandiose speeches about rights, no villains twirling mustaches. The horror is in the mundane: a doctor’s cold evasion, a friend’s sudden distance, the way a classroom discussion about Madame Bovary becomes a silent indictment of society’s hypocrisy.

The abortion sequence itself is one of the most harrowing scenes in recent memory not for gore, but for its unblinking intimacy. Diwan doesn’t aestheticize pain; she forces you to feel it, frame by agonizing frame. Yet the film isn’t just about suffering. It’s about the quiet, furious resilience of a woman who refuses to disappear.

In an era where reproductive rights are under global assault, Happening is more than art it’s a weapon. A flawless, furious masterpiece.