My Bellybutton has Changed Today

Aujourd’hui mon nombril a changé (My bellybutton has changed today) is a poetic audiovisual correspondence between two sisters, both artists, who underwent abortions one year apart, almost to the day. Through a shared language of images, memory, and voices, the film explores the traces left by this experience. Within a mosaic fragmented form, the film is a personal trajectory into family VHS archive footage of their childhood, where the filmmakers raise intimate questions about motherhood, distance, privilege and silences.

Clara Baj is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker from France. Holding a BA in Human Sciences and having graduated from a MA in Visual Anthropology in Paris as well as a MA in documentary film directing from DocNomads, Clara mostly worked on topics surrounding visual representations, language and national identity. Nowadays also working as curator and coordinator of documentary film festivals, Clara is praising an experimental and collaborative cinema where narrative sovereignty is key. She is now working on the direction of personal film projects as well as conducting a research project in the arts around the representations of reproductive rights and the questions of silences surrounding the issue of abortion.

Manon Baj grew up in Paris. At 18 she moved to Bristol, UK to study filmmaking for three years. Then, she came back to Paris where she got interested into social work and started working with underage teenagers with social issues, through film and photography. She is now still in Paris working on different professional photography projects linked with fashion and events while working on personal social and intimate photography projects.