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Call Jane film image, director Phyllis Nagy, starring Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver

Call Jane

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A privileged housewife in 1968 Chicago finds herself at odds with the patriarchal medical establishment when she requires a life-saving termination of pregnancy. Joy (Elizabeth Banks, in a charming and nuanced performance) encounters an underground organization called Jane Collective that provides safe abortions to women, and eventually becomes an integral part in this necessary fight.

Directed by Phyllis Nagy, Call Jane deftly balances light and dark in exploring the stories of desperate women who require abortions and the women who risk their lives for them. A timely and relevant film about reproductive justice in the year that Roe v. Wade was overturned, the film is accessible, passionate, and hugely entertaining.

We know the achievements and victories of the era Nagy depicts, and yet, because she and her fine cast bring the story to such vivid, immediate life, the final moments of Call Jane are powerful with unanticipated joy. They sting too, because we know where we are now, and the trajectory of the intervening years.”—Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter

Director
Cast

Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Mara, Chris Messina, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Michael Smith, Grace Edwards

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2022

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
18+

At Vancouver Playhouse

19+

At The Rio

121 min
Drama Human Rights & Social Justice Women Directors

Book Tickets

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Credits

Producer

Robbie Brenner, David Wulf, Kevin McKeon

Screenwriter

Hayley Schore, Roshan Sethi

Cinematography

Greta Zozula

Editor

Peter McNulty

Production Design

Jona Tochet

Original Music

Isabella Summers

Director

Phyllis Nagy headshot, Call Jane director

Photo by K.L. Harrison

Phyllis Nagy

Phyllis Nagy earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations and won the NY Film Critics Circle award for her adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel, The Price of Salt, which was released as the feature film Carol (2015), starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Nagy garnered Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing for her work on the HBO film Mrs. Harris (2005), starring Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley, which also received SAG and Golden Globes nominations.

Filmography: Mrs. Harris (2005)