Audrey Diwan’s unflinching second feature, a deserving winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is a powerful and gripping drama set in a society that condemned female desire and sexual liberty.

In 1963 France, Anne, a promising young university student, is devastated to learn that she is pregnant. She immediately insists on termination, but her physician warns of the unsparing laws against either seeking or aiding abortions, and her tentative attempts to reach out to her closest friends are nervously rebuffed. As weeks pass, without support or clear access, an increasingly desperate Anne unwaveringly persists in seeking any possible means of ending the pregnancy in hopes of reclaiming her hard-fought future.

Adapting Annie Ernaux’s eponymous memoir, Audrey Diwan creates an expressively evoked period piece of undeniable current resonance. Happening never sensationalizes, but directly and graphically details not only the dangers and indignities of Anne’s harrowing quest but also how the surrounding indifference escalates her plight. Anamaria Vartolomei stuns as the unrelenting Anne, immersing us in her character’s certainty that the failure to end this pregnancy would surely be the end of her life as well.

Happening is a harrowing glimpse at life in a different time in a different country than the U.S., but at the same time it’s a vision of what life will be like for countless American women in the near future.

CONTENT WARNING: Please be aware that this film contains topics that may be activating including intense depictions of bodily trauma and abortion.