Women Talking: Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy on their hard-hitting film
Jessie Buckley in a scene from Women Talking.
Set in an isolated colony of Mennonite Christians, Women Talking – directed by Sarah Polley and based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Mennonite-raised Miriam Toews – tells a story that has roots in real-life horror and explores an imagined retaliation against gender-based violence.
In the opening scenes of the film, which is in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars, it’s revealed that the women and girls of the religious colony have been violently raped in their sleep at the hands of colony men over an extended period of time, having been knocked out with animal anaesthetic – a concept based on real life events that happened at the Manitoba Colony, a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia.
