TORONTO, Sept. 21, 2022 /CNW/ — A ground-breaking documentary feature film that challenges the social mantra that motherhood is both a duty and a destiny will have its Canadian premiere on CBC’s The Documentary Channel on Sunday, September 25.
Therese Shechter, the director of My So-Called Selfish Life, said “the film is a journey through one of our society’s greatest social taboos: choosing not to become a mother, an issue that has taken on vital new relevance following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.“
My So-Called Selfish Life was supported by The Canada Council for the Arts and produced by Trixie Films, a fully independent, female-led production company that Shechter founded in 2001.
Shechter is the award-winning director of How to Lose Your Virginity and I Was a Teenage Feminist. “My films grow out of thorny issues around women’s roles and destinies,” she said, “and My So-Called Selfish Life examines the thorniest of them all, for if a woman can’t control her own reproductive life, she can’t control the rest of her life.”
The film weaves together personal stories, pop culture, history and politics, showing the ways society reinforces the idea that motherhood is both duty and destiny, and the deeper cultural implications of this belief. It features a diverse, engaging group of subjects, and clips from TV and film showing the pressure on women to become mothers.
“The film has lots of humour. That’s an important part of my work, because it creates space for challenging conversations,” Shechter said. “I’ve been making documentaries for 20 years. The suggestion that motherhood isn’t a biological imperative – or defining measure of womanhood – is my most controversial topic yet.”
Among My So-Called Selfish Life’s subjects are a teacher who paid a high price for “coming out” as childfree on 60 Minutes in the 1970s, a University of Toronto student who wants her tubes tied, and a rapper who yearns to grow old like The Golden Girls.
In addition, the late journalist Anne Kingston, who wrote for the National Post and Macleans, provides expert commentary and recalls reactions to her controversial Macleans cover story “The Case Against Having Kids.” Poet and biographer Molly Peacock opens up about her choice not to have children, and the memoir it inspired.
My So-Called Selfish Life premieres on CBC’s The Documentary Channel Sunday, September 25, at 9pm ET/PT.
Encore broadcasts are as follows:
- Same night, at Midnight ET (9pm PT) and 3am ET (Midnight PT)
- Tuesday, September 27, at 9am, 2pm, 7pm (ET)
- Sunday, October 2, at 8am, 1pm, 6pm (ET)
- Friday, October 7, at 9pm ET/PT
The film is part of Documentary Channel programming until September 2025.
A live public screening with Shechter takes place in Toronto on October 26, 2022.
For more information and interview requests: contact Therese Shechter, Trixie Films therese@trixiefilms.com / 917-748-8567 (telephone/WhatsApp)
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