Women Talking

15

A group of Mennonite women realise that men from their colony have been drugging and assaulting them for years. They gather in a hay barn to decide between three courses of action: Do nothing. Stay and fight. Or leave. A cast of megawatt female performers – including Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy – use democracy to forge a way through collective trauma towards a hopeful future. In their isolated religious patriarchy, women are not taught literacy so a schoolteacher (Ben Whishaw) is asked by the woman that he (not so) secretly loves to take the minutes. Adapted by Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley from a Miriam Toews novel based on real events in Bolivia, and nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay Academy Awards, this is a moving, must-see drama.