High, Soft & Open
2024 · 16m · United Kingdom
Directed by Rita Conry
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
A hybrid documentary weaving anonymous personal narratives about the overlooked mental-health side effects of hormonal birth control, brought to life with visually rich reconstructions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Birth control discourse doesn't need another tender essay—but Conry's refusal to sensationalize the invisible side effects while still refusing to look away feels genuinely subversive in a space where everyone's either screaming or staying silent.
The formal architecture here is what matters: anonymous testimony + visual reconstruction creates a deliberate distance that honors both the specificity of experience and the universality of the form, situating itself thoughtfully within the essay-documentary tradition.
The decision to let reconstructions breathe without over-literalizing the testimonies—trusting visual suggestion over exposition—is what transforms this from awareness-raising into cinema that trusts the viewer to hold contradictions.