Amber Heard confronts intense public scrutiny and media trial in powerful doc Silenced | Review

From Amber Heard to Brittany Higgins to Catalina Ruiz-Navarro, this essential documentary traces the shocking ways in which women pay the price for speaking up.

Silenced documentary review

Director: Selina Miles

Star rating: ★★★

Actor Amber Heard makes a poignant appearance in the new documentary Silenced, which premiered at the World Cinema Documentary Competition section at Sundance. But the actor wants to amplify that this is not her story to tell, because she did not really have a choice. “This is not about me. I have lost my ability to speak. I am not here to tell my story. I don’t want to tell my story. In fact, I don’t want to use my voice anymore. That’s the problem,” she says, speaking directly to the camera.

The documentary is pivoted by the work of Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson in the Amber Heard case.

The premise

Silenced charts her story, but from the perspective of international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who worked along with her during the 2018 lawsuit filed by Heard’s ex-husband Johnny Depp, against British newspaper The Sun. It is Robinson's point of view that comes first, and she is among the multiple women whose stories are traced to contextualise how defamation laws are blatantly used to silence the stories/testimonies of survivors and victims.

Jennifer Robinson, whose 2022 book How Many More Women? How the Law Silences Women, inspired the film, wastes no time in opening up and threading the multiple stories together. Directed by Selina Miles, who uses the vérité approach to quite a moving effect, Silenced also considers the parallel cases of Mexico-based journalist Catalina Ruiz-Navarro and former federal government staffer Brittany Higgins. The details are traced closely enough as Miles moves from one case to another, overlapping the information, testimonies, and personal comments.

The urgency is instrumental to the film's rage-inducing, shocking power. It demands your fury and channels it into questioning how much more women stand to lose when they decide to speak up. The misogyny, online harassment and public vitriol are all explored here, but because there is so much ground to cover, it never really digs into one case in particular.

Silenced is infused with the right kind of anger, but at times, it forgets to draw the line. From the break of the MeToo movement to the case of Gisèle Pelicot, to the details of Andrew Tate and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Silenced is bustling with compelling stories but glosses over many to fit in its 97-minute runtime.

Final thoughts

Silenced also does not spend enough time with Robinson herself to truly understand her role in understanding and working towards the impacts of the legal system and the widespread expansion of defamation laws in the last few years. Even Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively's case is brought up, but it is ongoing, and the film merely adds a passing reference to how terms like defamation suits and online smear campaigns have become more common than ever.

This is a film that wants to chart a history along these lines of trials swinging the other way. But the truth is that there is no finish line in immediate sight. It is scary but what is the point if there is no hope? This is a film that needed more time and a tighter structure, but it nevertheless serves as a cautionary tale of the fights yet to be fought. These voices will not be silenced.