“When I started my period, I was very young and nobody had told me about it,” an interviewee reveals in the trailer for “Pandora’s Box,” a documentary about the stigma of menstruation and the activists fighting to eradicate it. “I really didn’t have any answers.”

This is a too-common occurrence. The spot estimates that half of the 800 million people who menstruate had no education about periods before their first cycle. “We live in this dystopia where our bodies and our realities and stories go completely unacknowledged,” one of the characters says.

Some of these stories include women from developing countries, incarcerated women, and trans men and non-binary folks. “We have to understand that not all women menstruate and not all people who menstruate are women,” we’re reminded. And for some, the stigma of menstruation is compounded by other facets of their identity. “When you spend your whole entire life trying to be masculine and then you’re gonna turn around and be like, ‘Oh by the way, I have periods.’ This isn’t gonna go well,” a trans interviewee comments.

Thankfully, there is a push for change. “If we could talk about menstruation in a matter-of-fact, conversational way, that alone would make the experience not so negative,” one subject proffers.

“Pandora’s Box” hails from an all-female creative team, including writer-director Rebecca Snow, producers Aine Corby and Cait Martin Newnham, exec producer Carinne Chambers-Saini, cinematographer Sarah Thomas Moffatt, editor Sara Cabrera Aragon, and composer Janal Bechthold. Their goal with the film is “placing menstrual justice center-stage [and] harnessing the power of documentary storytelling to lift the lid on a critical human rights issue that spans the globe.”

“Pandora’s Box” hits VOD platforms today, International Women’s Day. Find more information on the doc’s website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9bvb7qgLs