Gisèle Halimi, a fierce freedom

Show & Culture

"Struggle is dynamic. If we stop, we fall. If we stop, we're doomed." At just ten years old, Gisèle Halimi went on a hunger strike to avoid serving her brothers. Based on her interviews with journalist Annick Cojean, Léna Paugam creates a two-voice theater narrative—not to embody Halimi, but to reveal the trajectory of a woman who never accepted the place assigned to her. As a teenager, she rejected an imposed marriage. As a lawyer during the Algerian War, she defended National Liberation Front activists, denounced abuses by the French army, and defended Djamila Boupacha, a young Algerian woman tortured in detention. As a signatory of the Manifesto of the 343, she argued in Bobigny in 1972, paving the way for the Veil Law, and was later instrumental in recognizing rape as a crime in Aix in 1978. Elected Deputy in 1981, she voted to abolish the death penalty. Léna Paugam adds two personal threads: the mother against whom Halimi defined herself, and the sea, seen from Tunis, suggesting parts untold by the courtroom.