Documentary "To Arms, Citizens!": Revolutionary Women Finally Come Out of the Shadows

"Men took the Bastille, women took royalty itself." This is how historian Jules Michelet summarized the march on Versailles in October 1789. This episode, during which the "ladies of the Market," led by the merchant Reine Audu, soon joined by thousands of other angry women, forcibly brought the king back to the Tuileries, marks a decisive turning point in the French Revolution. It opens the documentary Aux armes, citoyennes! , which sheds light on the role of women in this period of political turmoil.

Its authors, Mathieu Schwartz and Émilie Valentin, drew on recent historical research to identify six figures who have long remained in the shadows. Alongside the essential Olympe de Gouges , a woman of letters, we meet Anne-Josèphe Théroigne, nicknamed the Belgian Amazon because of her riding costume and her Liège origins; the journalist Louise de Kéralio, who defended republican principles within the Mercure national ; Catherine Pochetat, who enlisted in the revolutionary army in men's clothing. Or the radical activist Pauline Léon, whose club demanded that women be armed.

Their often tragic fates are recounted through rare archives (judgments, press clippings, engravings) and high-quality animation sequences by Hugo de Faucompret, director of the beautiful 2021 feature film Maman pleut des cordes . His boldly colored drawings and fluid, dynamic animation echo the sense of exaltation of these freedom-loving activists.

Denigrated, silenced, and abused, including by their revolutionary "friends," they fought hard to defend progressive ideas and enabled egalitarian advances such as divorce law, before the violent backsliding imposed by the First Empire. This radiant film pays them a touching tribute.