MONTREAL — Bell Media announced today the launch of production on the drama series Désobéir: Le choix de Chantale Daigle (Disobey: Chantale Daigle’s Choice), which will air on Crave in spring 2023.
Produced by Les productions ALSO’s Sophie Lorain (above, left) and Alexis Durand-Brault (right, who will also direct) in collaboration with Bell Media, the miniseries is written by Daniel Thibault and Isabelle Pelletier.
It focuses on the 1989 Chantale Daigle affair and the legal battle surrounding the right to abortion in Canada, explains a Bell Media press release.
“Désobéir: Le choix de Chantale Daigle relates the right to abortion on a human scale, an important milestone in the history of women’s rights in Canada which, 30 years later, remains fragile,” said Sophie Parizeau, general manager of fiction at Bell Media, in an English translation of the press release.
“This is why we have decided to deal with the subject from the angle of this significant experience, which hit the headlines at the time and allowed many women to be able to use their bodies as they saw fit,” Parizeau said.
“We are proud of this second collaboration between Bell Media and Les productions ALSO after the success of Sortez-moi de moi.”
Désobéir: Le choix de Chantale Daigle tells the story of Daigle who, at the age of 21, falls in love with and then becomes pregnant by Jean-Guy Tremblay, a man who turns out to be manipulative and aggressive.
“After a stormy relationship, she leaves him, chooses to have an abortion… but Jean-Guy, wounded in his pride and eager to maintain their relationship, appeals to justice to prevent it. Against all odds, a judge rules in favour of Jean-Guy, although termination of pregnancy had been decriminalized a year earlier. The case revives the debate on abortion nationally and internationally. Having become the centre of a media and political cyclone, Chantale sees her life turned upside down forever. Will she find the strength to assume her choice until the end?” reads the English translation of a series synopsis.
The miniseries is an original idea by documentary filmmaker Gaëlle D’Ynglemare, who has been developing the project since 2019 with Les productions ALSO.
Filming will begin this summer.
For Bell Media’s French press release, please click here.
Photo montage provided by Bell Media.
