Directed by Celina Escher
A grave warning of how far state control of women's bodies can go, FLY SO FAR follows Teodora Vasquez, who was sentenced to thirty years in a Salvadorean prison after she suffered a stillbirth.
As states in the U.S. enact abortion bans, FLY SO FAR serves as a grave warning of how far government control of women's bodies can go. This brave film from Swiss-Salvadorean filmmaker Celina Escher is set in El Salvador, a country with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, including the criminalization of those who experience miscarriages and other obstetric emergencies..
The narrative centers on Teodora Vasquez, who was in the ninth month of her second pregnancy when she fainted and suffered a stillbirth. When she woke up at the hospital, she was accused of murder and was sentenced to thirty years in prison for aggravated homicide. At Ilopango Women's Prison, she becomes the spokesperson for The Seventeen, a group of working-class women who were all incarcerated after having miscarriages. Many of these same women became pregnant after being sexually assaulted. While it exposes brutal human rights abuses, FLY SO FAR is unmistakably a story of collective resistance, activism, sisterhood, as well as the self-determination and agency of women.
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