International Women’s Day, “Run” (Directed by Camille Natta) and “Earn the Day” (Written and Directed by Jane Shepard)

Happy International Women’s Day! 

According to UN Women, the 2023 theme is: “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” It is aligned with the main theme for the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women: “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.”

I subscribe to the e-newsletter of filmmaker Ela Thier and she recently recommended a short film titled “Earn the Day”. I watched it then I understood why she mentioned in her short commentary that she was halfway through the film and she was both laughing and crying. After watching the film, I wrote in the comment section: “Funny, fun and so inspiring!”

The music video for IVA’s beautiful song “Run” was directed by Camille Natta and is her directorial debut as a solo director. “This is an experimental music video about a woman finding her inner strength to run in the cold in the dead of winter in Northern Sweden.”

I would say that the essence of “Earn the Day” is about the protagonist finding her inner strength to run away from the cold, harsh criticisms of her inner voices. Two powerful images appear both in “Run” and “Earn the Day”: a carefree little girl running freely, joyfully, unencumbered, unashamedly. In “Earn the Day”, the little girl appears when the protagonist is in the flow, when she is being her authentic self, when she has silenced those inner critics, when she has given herself permission to rest. In “Run”, the little girl appears during the chorus of the song, a simple chorus, reminiscent of the chorus in that Sheryl Crow song (“Run, baby, run, baby, run, baby, run, baby, run”) but in IVA’s song, the chorus is made up of one repeated word: “Run, run, run, run, run, run…”

When we women can reconnect with that little girl, or at least, that little girl’s energy, optimism and hope, then we can be transformed and run further than we ever imagined.

At the end of both “Earn the Day” and “Run”, the protagonists are transformed into more powerful versions of themselves.