The documentary directed by Barry Avrich follows Rosalie Abella’s path from refugee daughter of Holocaust survivors to Canada’s top court
Rosalie Abella can claim a remarkable number of firsts. She was the youngest judge in Canadian history when, at just 29 and pregnant, she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976. She was the first person to coin the phrase “employment equity” in the landmark 1984 Royal Commission on Equality in Employment. She was the country’s first female Jewish Supreme Court judge. And when she stepped down from that bench in 2021 , Abella left as the Supreme Court’s longest-serving member.
Now, Abella can claim another first: the first Canadian judge to ever be the subject of a full-length documentary. On May 1, the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto will host the world premiere of. The doc, directed by the prolific Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich , traces Abella’s long journey from the refugee daughter of Holocaust survivors to the top of the global justice community.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Abella and Avrich spoke with The Globe and Mail about turning a legal story into a love story.Barry Avrich: As a documentary filmmaker, you’re constantly eyes wide open for ideas and extraordinary characters. Rosalie seemed like a Hollywood meets Broadway meets Aaron Sorkin meets Barbara Walters character. It’s all there. And for me, this film ends up being part of a trilogy of films on justice, starting withProsecuting EvilRosalie, would you characterize yourself as being in the Aaron Sorkin mold?Well, I only thought about Sorkin because of the great legal stuff.
How did your conversations evolve? The relationship between documentarian and subject can sometimes be fraught.I’m not a nervous person, but I was going into a room with someone just far more intelligent than I can ever be.It was an exercise in mutual humility. I didn’t know anything about making a documentary or the creative process, and Barry was extremely respectful of the world that I was in. Neither of us were afraid to ask each other questions.Yes, I did.
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