Persister: Women speaking up and being heard

Turkey has the highest rates of domestic violence among developed countries in the world. With incidents of femicide and domestic abuse soaring, and women's democratic rights increasingly being eroded, Dying to Divorce follows a courageous lawyer and her indomitable clients' efforts to put violent men behind bars. Shot over five years, their fight for justice, part of the "We Will Stop Femicide" initiative, follows two survivors' cases against their violent partners. The survivors' experiences form a pattern of violence against women that dovetails into larger systemic injustices and recent political events in the country that have severely curtailed female freedoms. A unique perspective on the struggle to be an independent, modern Turkish woman, this is a film that enrages and empowers by connecting intimate personal stories with larger women's rights issues, whose problems originate in the nation's political ideology—one predicated on toxic masculinity and pride. Angie Driscoll
The Monument Counter artwork courtesy of Zeren Göktan

Persister program presented in partnership with Oxfam Canada