When almost all the women of Iceland walked off the job and out of their homes one fall morning in 1975 refusing to work, cook, or take care of the children, they brought their country to its knees and catapulted the island nation to its status as one of the best places in the world today to be a woman. Told for the first time by the women themselves and timed for release in the lead-up to the strike’s 50th anniversary, the story is subversive and unexpectedly funny. “We loved our male chauvinist pigs,” recalls one of the activists, “We just wanted to change them a little!” This is the true story of one day that changed everything. The Day Iceland Stood Still is a collaboration between U.S. director Pamela Hogan, who campaigned as a high school student in the 1970s with her activist mother to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and Icelandic producer Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, who at the age of 7 accompanied her mother to that very strike in 1975 and thought that when she woke up the next morning “everything would be perfect.” The E.R.A. never passed in the U.S., and Iceland still isn’t perfect – but it’s the only country to have closed over 90% of its gender gap, and committed to reaching full equality in the near future. There’s a famous saying: “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.” We hope this story will inspire viewers all over the world to reimagine the possible.
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