Marian Võsumets
The film that was missing…
The Body Fights Back is an independent documentary by Estonian journalist and broadcaster Marian Võsumets. The film is produced and funded by her production house Lola Productions.
Marian first began her career as a health journalist, moving on to producing television documentaries and presenting news reports for Estonia’s Channel 2, with a focus on international politics and factual entertainment. Her two most notable documentaries tap into Brexit protests in London and Eurovision fandom in Israel, both aired in 2019. The Body Fights Back is her debut feature film.
With support from a highly motivated team of creative millennials, the exciting work of producing and directing a guerrilla style documentary in the United Kingdom began in late 2018. Inspired by deep personal experience and a passion for social justice issues, the only option was to make the film that was missing.
In this documentary, Marian explores the extent to which troubled eating is tolerated and encouraged in today’s society, asking whether it’s simply because the troubled eater is all of us. Regardless of age, race and social status, that crippling sense of never really fitting the norm is ubiquitous. So we keep pushing further and end up spiralling into destructive cycles of self-sabotage.
After a year-long marathon of the most deeply moving interviews, it became clear that there was a connecting thread. The hierarchy of human bodies that people cultivate in their heads is so powerful, that we gladly fall into the traps we set up for ourselves. An indicator strong enough to call for shaking up the ideas of what it means to be healthy.
