Telluride: Hillary Clinton Talks ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-Style Abortion Policy at Doc Premiere

Hillary Clinton encouraged a film festival audience in Telluride, Colorado, to “get back to a time when your government is not determining what your choices for your family would be, which is just so Handmaid’s Tale.”

Clinton was in Telluride on Saturday for the premiere of Zurawski v Texas, a documentary she produced about a group of women who sued the state of Texas in 2023 after they were denied abortions when their health was at risk. The film, which was directed by Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault and is seeking distribution, screened to a sold-out and often sobbing audience at the festival’s 650-seat Palm Theater. 

Zurawski v Texas is one of a number of politically topical films at the festival, including Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, in which Sebastian Stan plays a young Donald Trump (Briarcliff Entertainment); Matt Tyrnauer’s Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid! about Democratic strategist James Carville, which was acquired by CNN Films while at Telluride; and Errol Morris’s Separated, about the Trump administration’s family-separation policy at the U.S. border, which is looking for a buyer.

“I don’t think we can underestimate how important this film is in order to break through the eye-rolling, the denial, the dismissiveness, the cruelty that has affected so many women’s lives in our country today,” Clinton said at the Zurawski v Texas post-screening Q&A, which this reporter moderated. Three of the Texas plaintiffs whose stories appear in the movie — Amanda Zurawski, Samantha Casiano and Austin Dennard — appeared at the premiere alongside the filmmakers, as did Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Chelsea Clinton. 

The Clintons backed Zurawski v Texas through HiddenLight, the production company they co-founded together with Sam Branson. HiddenLight won an Emmy last year for In Her Hands, a documentary about a female mayor in Afghanistan. The company is also backing a film on efforts by George and Amal Clooney’s foundation to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine. 

“We merged all of our ideas, hopes, frustrations and rage into HiddenLight to try to help platform people telling stories that we think urgently need to be told and yet are left in the shadows because the subject matter is uncomfortable for people,” Chelsea said at the Q&A. “We think we’re in a moment where we actually need to be uncomfortable. And so when we learned that Maisie and Abbie were working on this film we said, ‘What can we do? How can we help?’” Other producers of the film include Jennifer Lawrence’s Excellent Cadaver, Story Force Entertainment and Bumble Inc.

The Texas abortion ban the Zurawski case challenged was triggered by the 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that overturned Roe v. Wade. Asked whether she was surprised by the Dobbs decision, the former secretary of state said, “No, I was not. I had watched in a very concerned way, the steady, relentless attack on women’s reproductive health, and in particular on Roe v. Wade for years, and often said that if we’re not careful, there will be a Supreme Court that is literally designed to reverse Roe v. Wade… It was terribly distressing and disappointing but not surprising.”

The conversation was a mix of talk about filmmaking, healthcare and politics in the post-Roe era, with the plaintiffs sharing some of the most personal moments about their lives, as they had in a Texas courtroom.

“I wanted to be anonymous at first, and then I gave birth to my daughter, and I saw her eyes bleed,” Casiano said, explaining her decision to allow the filmmakers’ cameras at the funeral of her baby, Halo, who lived for only four hours. Casiano had learned at her 20-week scan that her baby had anencephaly and would not survive. Since she lacked the resources to travel out of Texas for an abortion, she continued the pregnancy. “From then on, I knew there was no way I could just go on without letting others know that this is reality, and this is what’s happening right now to women.”

Duane, the attorney on the case, emerges as a key character in the film, preparing for court and mothering her own young children. “Part of this lawsuit was telling these stories to as big of an audience as possible,” Duane said, explaining why she was participating in the documentary. “We wanted people to stop pretending like [these women] didn’t exist.”

Ten states, including Colorado, will have abortion measures on the ballot in November. Clinton said that she hoped that voters would demonstrate, “they are not in favor of what we have seen in this film.”