Procession

What immediately springs to mind while watching Procession is the 2003 Danish documentary The Five Obstructions. But where the latter is a game of authorship, the former is a labor of authorship. Procession asks, “Whose story gets told? And how and when and through what lens of history?” The six subjects of the film bravely take part in drama therapy–a method of acting out one’s trauma for objective healing–as a means to also change the narrative surrounding child sexual/religious abuse.

Trust is a monumentally huge part of this documentary. Not only must the six real-life survivors of sexual abuse put their trust in the audience–that they won’t judge them for their emotional reactions or their recreations of painful memories–but they also had to trust that the documentary filmmakers wouldn’t push them so far as to be potentially re-traumatized for entertainment purposes. Several of the victims even took on the role of their Catholic priest that abused them, with a real-life adolescent likewise acting as them. It’s such a fragile narrative from all points of view and, apart from a lone location scene snafu, the film traverses those complexities with grace.

The visual recreations themselves are just fascinating to watch. We are invited into their worst experiences, but with a very clear thematic (and yes, cinematic) intent. For example, take the enactment where the young boy is running up to the church’s rafters and, in a snap, the entire congregation turns to look at him. The moment is so expressive of feeling abandoned in plain sight that I can truly think of no comparison as poignant. This applies also to their documented journey of making the film. When one of the men rings the bell at his childhood church in Wyoming, the joy on his face is moving precisely because we know what that moment has cost him as well.

Without a doubt, Procession is a true testament to the enduring strength of sexual abuse survivors, as well as a severe condemnation of the corrupt systems that traumatized and continue to traumatize them. These men bared their souls at great emotional risk to themselves, but I don’t doubt that their willingness to heal will inspire others to do so as well.