Back when she was 20 years old and still in art school, the Brazilian-American filmmaker Julia Mellen got pregnant, scraped together enough money to get an abortion, and threw a party to celebrate the procedure’s success. Her recent documentary Abortion Party, which we’re stoked to premiere online, sees her revisit this period in her life and reflect upon her precarious living situation at the time, the politics of throwing an “abortion party”, and the after-effects of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Using her webcam and an iPhone microphone, Mellen candidly divulges the causes and effects behind the eponymous party while sharing a 3D-rendered model of the events being described that was made with a 2017 version of the architectural software Sketchup. This combination of confessional vulnerability and endearingly crude images makes for all sorts of hilarious moments in Abortion Party, while also evincing Mellen’s talents as an artist whose skills lie at the crossroads of high effort and low skill.
“I was raised to laugh in order not to cry. Maybe it’s not right. But I think it’s important to note the function of the abortion in the film. It’s the reason people are gathered, but in many ways it takes a backseat to the life that was around. It was placed the way the abortion was placed in my life: an obstacle, but ultimately a relief that allowed me to continue observing and enjoying the other little chaoses around me.” JULIA MELLEN
Mellen started making this film before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but returned to the project in its aftermath, thinking back on the precarity that defined her lifestyle as a student in Chicago in relation to the relative calm of her present-day existence in Spain. “Moving to Spain, the environment I found myself in was strikingly different from what I had in Chicago,” she said in an interview with Louise Martin Papasian. “Grateful to no longer be beholden to my impulses and confused attempts at self-preservation, I began to pivot from being horrified by my past to respecting it.” Her aim was never to make a film intent on converting someone to be pro-choice, so much as a work that reflected the trials and tribulations of her experience, as well as those of other young women in the United States. There is no didactic moral lesson in this film, nor is there patted self-adulation, just a plainspoken anecdote that teeters between hilarious and heartbreaking while remaining firmly rooted in the honest and personal.
Julia Mellen is a Madrid-based Brazilian-American filmmaker. She studied New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her work combines personal experiences with lo-fi imagery. In 2020, her film Yung Lean, Please Be My Yung Love won Best International Short Film at the London Short Film Festival. Abortion Party, in turn, won the Alice Guy Award at FIDMarseille 2025 and has continued to tour at festivals worldwide to much acclaim. She also participated in the recent Locarno Residency 2026, where she worked on developing Being Watched, a film about porn and retribution.
Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Square Eyes.