Jennifer Fox, director of Sundance 2018 hit “The Tale” – “a landmark advance in the field of cinematic memoir,” said Variety – is bound for Series Mania in Lille with “Ruth’s Ghosts.”
The title marks Fox’s first narrative fiction series and an early real-life grounded vision projected in a very near future of family and legal strife in the U.S. as dictatorship.
Selection will see Fox and “Ruth Ghosts’” fellow producers Tara Grace and Jana Lotze presenting the six-episode series project at the Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, its industry centerpiece, where it bids fair to be a conversation driver.
Hailed by Series Mania as “bold and necessary,” “Ruth’s Ghosts” joins 15 other projects at the Pitching Sessions as a sixteenth title presented out of competition in partnership with the Berlinale Co-Production Market.
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Selection for Europe’s biggest TV festival came after “Ruth’s Ghosts” won a Series Mania berth among titles at Berlinale Series Market’s Co-Pro Series, one of Europe’s other key project series pitching events, which took place Feb. 18.
From her first title as a documentarian, 1987’s “Beirut: the Last Home Movie” which won a Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 1988, “Ruth’s Ghosts,” her first narrative series, continues Fox’s move into what she has called “social issue fiction.”
Set in 2030 New Orleans, it turns on Ruth, a devout Evangelical pro-life lawyer who sues her daughter Naomi, a liberal jazz musician, for custody over Liv, 13, who is dangerously pregnant.
As Naomi battles for Liv’s abortion, Ruth, haunted by Madame Restell, a 19th century abortionist, sees her iron convictions crack. She will end up fighting in court for Liv’s right to an abortion in a nation where the procedure is banned.
“Ruth’s Ghosts” is a high-stakes supernatural thriller that explores a deeply relevant global issue through the intimate lens of a family divided by opposing political and religious beliefs, layered with a ghost story that transcends time,” Fox told Variety.
“It’s a truly unique, suspenseful, and multidimensional series with universal resonance,” she added.
“At a time when individual freedoms are increasingly under threat, we must take a stand. Women’s right to abortion is hard-won, yet at risk – especially in the U.S. This project is a call to action, and Europe now has the chance to lend its support,” said Laurence Herszberg, general director of Series Mania, announcing the Series Mania selection.
“Ruth’s Ghosts” is created, written and to be directed by Fox, and produced by Fox for A Luminous Mind, Grace for Los Angeles’ Temair Pictures and Lotze for Berlin’s Oma Inge Film, along with Oren Moverman (“Love & Mercy,” “Bad Education”), Simone Pero, Beverly Rogers. It is made with partners Zas Films and Andromeda Film.
Based on real life building oppression in the U.S. happening at this very moment, “Ruth’s Ghosts” projects a shift in not only fundamental liberties in the U.S. but also the U.S.-Europe industry balance.
“It’s been widely reported that networks and streamers in the U.S. are not picking up anything political, I was formerly at HBO, where we did a lot of political shows. That kind of programming is not happening any longer in the US.,” said Grace, a former SVP HBO Films and Drama.
Ruth’s Ghosts
“We’ve always had the idea of doing ‘Ruth’s Ghosts’ as an international co-production, because that’s what Jennifer had done throughout her career. Now that’s become very practical,” Grace added.
“There’s a historical moment: from a European perspective, we’ve always looked towards the U.S, and wanted to go there, hoping that there is more opportunity. Now there’s a kind of turn around. This is the moment where we can actually help and show solidarity and really bring something to the table from the European side,” added Lotze.
“We were very moved by Series Mania, a French TV forum, choosing us, an American story. As we want to make the series as a European co-production, it’s very meaningful and very validating,” Grace added.
“People immediately understand the urgency and the relevance of the topic and are excited that the series is being made by Jennifer Fox,” Lotze observed. “We are in intensive talks with one territory and interest from others – we are pretty confident that in the end this series will find the support and commitment we need to make it,“ she added.
Variety chatted to Fox after “Ruth’s Ghosts’” selection for Series Mania.
In what way’s do you see “Ruth’s Ghosts” marking an evolution from ‘The Tale’ and your earlier work?
This is such a brilliant question: In some ways, it’s completely new in that it’s a totally fictional world. It’s not memoir like “The Tale,” but like “The Tale,” it is totally based on reality and on research. For me, the ghost element was really discovered in making “The Tale” where Jennifer, played by Laura Dern, speaks to her younger self as if she were really in the room with her. I’m continuing a creative model, trying to express the idea that all time – past, present and future – are one reality. So the ghost of Madame Restell appears to Ruth as if they were in the same time-continuum and is completely real: She’s not an otherworldly ghost at all.
Apart from your vision of our mental landscape as one continuum, that melding of past and present looks like a reflection on history…
Yes. We’re still fighting the same battles, from 30 years, 50 years, 100 years ago. It’s tragic because, where is the learning and growth? I’m telling “Ruth’s Ghosts” in order to have audiences see how history is repeating itself over and over again.
You could imagine Madame Restell’s life as an abortionist happening a decade from now in in the U.S.
Exactly. And also her demise. That could happen today. To be honest, anybody who is pro-abortion is terrified of the anti-abortion movement. The crackdown that happened to Madame Restell in the late 1800’s is happening today.Right now, as we speak, both Texas and Louisiana are suing a New York doctor for shipping the abortion pill to a woman in Louisiana, a state where there is a complete abortion band enshrined in their constitution with no exception for rape or incest.
On the other hand, “Ruth’s Ghosts” is radically different from “The Tale” which heralded what seemed a time of progress: women realizing that treatment which they thought was normal was in fact abuse. Now, norms which people thought normal are being questioned, as is the whole idea of history as progress, however halting.…
The irony and I think shock and the motivation for me to do this series was discovering that abortion was legal in America and much of the world up to the late 1800s. Women actually had more bodily autonomy over their reproductive rights because it was up to the woman to decide when she was in fact pregnant, which was when the baby kicked in her womb, called “quickening.” And that happens at about four months. Up until “quickening” abortion was legal.
Your work stands outs for its timeliness, and also, it’s been said, a sense of trauma. The timely nature of “Ruth’s Ghosts” is obvious but is there a sense of trauma?
My feeling is that almost no woman escapes trauma. That is the nature of our lot. Ruth was traumatized growing up. And, of course, there’s no way a 13 year old like her granddaugther, Liv, gets pregnant without trauma. It’s almost impossible to meet a woman on the planet that doesn’t have a trauma history,unfortunately. This is something I would like to bring to light and see change.