It's as common as cancer and causes more infertility than any other disease, yet diagnosis requires surgery, and most people wouldn't recognize its name. A filmmaker with a decade of debilitating pain seeks answers from top researchers, the inventor of video laparoscopy, and a new generation of patient-scientists.
SYNOPSIS
Why would some of the world's most accomplished scientists choose to spend their careers on diseases the medical establishment has deemed unworthy of attention or resources?
"From Pain, Pursuit" is a feature documentary investigating what personally drives the people leading women’s health into a new era. The film centers on scientists and clinicians working on endometriosis and adenomyosis, diseases of the uterus that still require surgery to diagnose despite affecting an estimated one in five women and girls worldwide. This neglect is common across gynecological conditions. Advances in research and medical care for fibroids, PCOS (also called PMOS), and gynecological cancers are also hindered by a long history of underfunding, exclusion of women from medical research, and a stigma that has barred these diseases from public conversation and medical education.
Investigating a decade of chronic pain and an inconclusive surgery, the filmmaker becomes the connective tissue between stories from inventors, researchers, and surgeons leading the field of diagnostics and treatment of endometriosis and adenomyosis. This documentary reveals how the filmmaker, scientists, and doctors are motivated by their own diagnoses, or the suffering of someone they love, which drives them to find answers. Pain motivates pursuit. This convergence of personal experience and scientific expertise, of centuries of neglect and a present moment of possibility, is what makes this story both timely and cinematically rich. The film is a call to action: to fund science that enables a future of evidence-based medicine for women’s health.
Director Statement
There is a silent epidemic as prevalent as cancer. One in three American women over the age of sixty has had a hysterectomy. The diseases behind that statistic touch nearly every family.
It is a privilege to speak with experts in women’s health research, asking questions on behalf of every patient without that access. With so little research on gynecologic diseases, accurate information is hard to find. This is compounded by the absence of common diseases such as endometriosis and fibroids from health education, a stigma that keeps them out of conversation, and a specialist workforce far too small for the disease burden it addresses.
As both a patient and a science communicator, my responsibility is not just to connect my audience with the experts, but to serve as a conduit for complex medical concepts. I want this film to inspire trust and hope while maintaining transparency about the limits of what is currently known, especially when it comes to new products entering the market.
“From Pain, Pursuit” is already functioning as a catalyst for exactly the conversations it was made to begin. After screenings, women approach me to share their own stories for the first time, and friends later disclose diagnoses I never knew about. The silence around endometriosis, adenomyosis, and the broader family of gynecological diseases is the result of centuries of stigma, and it is exactly what this film intends to disrupt.
Supporter Statement
“Ruthie Zapol understands that tricky but essential thing about storytelling: that to spark a conversation universally, the filmmaker must ground us in what is most personal. This is particularly difficult to accomplish when tackling vast medical systems, complex research, and the stigmatized study of women' s health. But the film smartly finds the personal at every turn, as Zapol tells the story of endometriosis through her eyes and the eyes of scientists who have been directly affected by the disease. As she weaves their stories and the stories of their patients with her own, she captures a common truth — that of course, the medical is and has always been this personal. That there is actually no other way to think about it. The film not only challenges what we think, but how, and reshapes the conversations we will have about the disease and women's health moving forward. I can’t wait to see it, and to see where Zapol’s storytelling leads.”
—Marielle Heller
Director —The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), Nightbitch (2024)
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Ruthie Zapol
Ruthie Zapol is a documentary filmmaker focused on translating complex scientific and medical topics into emotionally grounded stories. “From Pain, Pursuit” is her first feature documentary. The project grew out of her senior thesis at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where it gained early momentum after winning two faculty-juried prizes: the Lora Hays Award for Documentary Editing and the Alan Landsburg Documentary Production Award.
A 2026 BFA graduate of NYU Tisch, where she worked on more than thirty productions, Zapol has directed short documentary projects spanning genomics, climate science, and global health:
– "Genomic Frontiers Rwanda", created for Rwanda’s first genomics conference
– "Buying Time for Coral," investigating climate adaptation research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
– "Action for Women's Health", a film documenting healthcare innovation and early cancer detection in Rwanda.
She interned with director Marielle Heller during the post-production of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (2019) and “Nightbitch” (2024). Zapol brings to this project a track record of working directly with scientists and clinicians, a commitment to social justice storytelling, and nearly a decade of living with the diseases at the center of the film.
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Women Make Movies (WMM), Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State and accepts charitable donations on behalf of this project. Your donation will be spent by the filmmaker(s) toward the production and completion of this media project. No services or goods are provided by Women Make Movies, the filmmaker(s) or anyone else associated with this project in exchange for your charitable donation.
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