“Second-wave feminist, radical activist and journalist Judy Rebick, who spent decades providing a platform for voices that needed to be heard, allows focus to shift to her own life in this deeply personal and visually experimental biography.” Hot Docs Festival

“Mike Hoolboom, a filmmaker who has created a rich and singular filmography, builds a portrait of a friend, a letter of love and admiration, and a sensitive immersion into a unique life.” Cintia Gill, Sheffield Docs

“Mike Hoolboom strikes again with another hyper-sensual and dreamlike film made as if by an angel. It’s a biography which leans so easily into the universal that it transcends any individualizing attachments. First part of a new series dedicated to struggles against capitalism, Judy miraculously manages to make us glimpse a future with a tinted optimism of anticipation.” WarMMachine

“Watching this film is observing two fascinating and sharp free spirits interacting on contemporary social issues and their deeper meaning. I feel grateful for having learned about this remarkable and steadfast woman and fighter, someone never too good nor too busy for standing up for others while dealing with her own mental health.” Tobias Dietrich, U of Bremen, Human Rights Award

“A monumental worldview swept in and tried – with brute force, with discipline, with pedagogy – to make us each one self. But there is a prolific past that tells a different story of the body as an infinite collection of bodyings. And the grand historical force of producing the singular self has made these pasts difficult to gather, difficult to archive.” Julietta Singh, No Archive Will Restore You

“A flow of radical images builds up the powerful portrait of feminist activist and journalist Judy Rebick, one of the most influential rebel voices of 1970s progressive Canada. A strong advocate of pro-choice rights for women, alongside Doctor Henry Morgentaler, Judy Rebick waged epochal wars, guided the biggest feminist organization of Canada in the 1990s, and fought alongside the last against neoliberal capitalism. The evocative, poetic and impressionistic film depicts the personal, honest, inner – and thus intrinsically political – battle of a woman gifted with a great strength but also tormented by the demons of an unresolved past, with severe bouts of depression difficult to overcome. Using super 8 footage, the six-part film focuses on episodes of Judy’s public life and shows how any political discourse on vulnerability developed against the victimization of women and in favour of their speaking up must go through uncompromising research on and awareness of one’s personal identity." Ludovica Fales, Festival dei Popoli

“Mike Hoolboom’s moving portrait of his longtime friend, legendary social activist and author Judy Rebick, artfully fuses different cinematic and narrative strategies, combining political history and confessional, the atmospheric and the ruminative. Judy Versus Capitalism recounts Rebick’s extraordinary impact on Canada’s politics, including her work helping to build the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, her writing and broadcasting, and her ceaseless advocacy on a wide range of crucial issues. Indeed, at times, Rebick emerges as a kind of leftist Pynchonian character who’s eerily present at the most pivotal moments — from her involvement with the Waffle caucus to when she prevented an assailant from stabbing Henry Morgentaler as he opened his abortion clinic in Toronto. Hoolboom seamlessly links this history to Rebick’s own struggles with physical and mental health, most notably dissociative identity disorder, a condition she has been extraordinarily courageous about discussing. Few films have shown how the personal and political are intertwined so effectively, and fewer still have managed to be poignant, harrowing, and yet affirmative.” Steve Gravestock, TIFF Top 10, 2020

Radical feminist, street fighter, practical dreamer. This lyrical doc, shot in super 8, recounts Judy Rebick’s pivotal role in securing women’s rights over their own bodies in Canada. She lays out the key tenets of second-wave feminism, even as a family time bomb threatens. The film closes with a harrowingly personal account of a divided self, and a startling embrace of mental illness as creativity.