“Citizen Jane Fonda”, struggles and dreams of the actress who changed America

Jane Fonda, the woman, the artist, the activist determined to change America, then the world. Florence Platarets, a director by profession, wanted to tell in an unpublished documentary the complexity of an actress who was able to cross the boundaries of cinema. And, at the same time, the most difficult ones of the family heritage. Citizen Jane Fonda, broadcast on Sky Arte in the early evening of Friday 21 May, is the story of a little girl who became a woman, of the conscious tear with which she was able (and knew) to get away from her father’s shadow, from the constant and continuous confrontation with the talent of a famous father.

Jane Fonda, which Platarets has captured in her three-dimensionality, is revived young when, in open contrast to her father Henry’s acting techniques, she decides to enroll at the Actors School in New York. He was trembling then, his eyes filled with fear. Jane Fonda, to her teachers, appeared fragile, frightened, looking for something she could not name.

That “something” would come later, in the form of success and political commitment. Jane Fonda, over time, would learn to trust herself: the body that, following the words attributed to Thomas Jefferson, she would undertake to train. “I hope to be remembered for a concept: it’s never too late,” you hear her say in the clip of Citizen Jane Fonda, which, above, we show you exclusively. In the images, the actress, two Oscars and a twenty thousand page dossier in the FBI archives, is the woman of today, 83 years old. His eyes have remained clear, but the fear his masters once said they saw is gone. Jane Fonda has grown, and her growth – inextricably intertwined with the history of America and the world – tells the documentary Sky: careful journey through the depths of a soul, its impulses, the Vietnam war, disputes, two marriages and as many children, the peace found in old age and the relationship, conflictual and wavering, with the famous father.