Nearly 15M girls worldwide, between the 15 to 19, have experienced some form of sexual violence. And, nearly 35% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence at some point.Courage to Question gives visibility to women’s rights defenders around the world, who are are standing up against the violence and sexual abuse of women and children to achieve gender equity and justice.

Through VR180, the viewer becomes immersed into the worlds of our Women’s Rights Defenders. Viewers have the chance to experience the defiant courage of women advocating for victims and survivors of gender-based violence, mass incarceration, child exploitation, and human trafficking.

We put the spotlight on four women who are changing the global narrative on women’s rights and rewriting the future story for millions: Alice Marie Johnson, Lydia Cacho (Mexico), Asha Kowtal (India), and Chief Kachindamoto (Malawi).

The goal of Courage to Question is to use new technology and storytelling tools to help shed light to the injustices women are facing around the world. We scaled through bringing this content to the right people at the right points in time.

The Courage to Question series premiered at the United Nations Headquarters on International Women’s Day in front of an audience of influential decision makers within international policy and government. Over 750 audience members were in attendance including UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and more.

It will also be shown at key events related to gender equality and human rights to significantly elevate the stories of the women rights defenders, their communities and their efforts to address gender-based violence.

The content is also available on UN Women’s YT channel to demonstrate to a larger audience both the importance of women rights defenders’ movements around the world.

VR180 presently allows for a higher quality visual fidelity and provides a more intimate and focussed experience for viewers, affording our team to build more cinematic moments by blending traditional tracking/drone shots with VR capture. The field of view in 180 also allows for more control in crafting the stories of our subjects while giving the viewer a sense of presence with them, which is paramount to understanding their story, their drive and power.

This series was developed, produced and shot by an all female crew. This project was developed over the course of 6 months across 4 different countries