Women Talking: Film Screening + Q & A with Director Sarah Polley

 "Do nothing. Stay and fight. Or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith."  Based on the novel by Miriam Toews.

Join us for a FREE screening of the film "Women Talking" and a talk back with Director Sarah Polley & CCF Manager Farrah Khan.  Part of TMU's 16 Days of Activism to End Gender-Based Violence Events. 

November 23rd, 2022, 5:00 door open, 5:30 - 8:00 film screening + q & a

Directed by: Sarah Polley
Screenplay by: Sarah Polley
Based on the book by: Miriam Toews
Produced by: Dede Gardner, p.g.a, Jeremy Kleiner, p.g.a., Frances McDormand, p.g.a.
Executive Producers: Brad Pitt, Lyn Lucibello Brancatella, Emily Jade Foley
Cast: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand
Music By: Hildur Guðnadóttir
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG for mature thematic content, including sexual assault, bloody images, and some strong language

Film Screening and Q & A Organized: Student Affairs, Alumni Relations, Consent Comes First, the Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education

A Note from the Women Talking Producers

We very much want to share our film, Women Talking, with you. 

We made this film, first and foremost, to provoke a conversation. About the world we come from, the world we live in, and the world we hope to build.

In Women Talking, a group of women, many of whom disagree on foundational things, have just such a conversation about how to move forward together to build a better world for themselves and their children. Their current reality has become untenable after breathtaking, systemic violence. Their circumstances demand that they immediately engage in a probing, challenging dialogue with each other, despite their natural impulses to disregard each other’s points of view. Do they take action? Or follow the elders’ instructions to forgive and do nothing? And if they elect to do something – what will that be? To stay and fight? Or to leave? 

Although the story that informed the events in Women Talking is violent, the film is not. We do not show the violence that the women have experienced. We only see short flashes of the aftermath. Instead, we watch a community of women come together as they must decide, in a very short space of time, what their collective response will be. In this film, survivors move forward, with strength, complexity, and determination.

As one character says, “Should we discuss what we are trying to achieve rather than what we are trying to destroy?”  And if they vote to stay, what exactly would they be fighting for?

The ambition of this film is to capture a conversation in which people take on the possibility of changing their own minds as well as others, and in doing so, unleash the potential of remaking a broken world.

In hope,

Sarah Polley, Frances McDormand, Dede Gardner

About Sarah Polley:  she received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her first film as director- Away From Her, based on the short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. This film also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for star Julie Christie. Her next film Take This Waltz, starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Stories We Tell, her documentary which examines secrets and memory in her own family, won Best Documentary Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as a Writer’s Guild of America award for its screenplay. Polley executive produced and wrote the Netflix limited series Alias, Grace, which she adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel. 

As an actor, Polley starred in a wide variety of films, including Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics), Doug Liman’s Go  (Independent Spirit Award nomination), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody opposite Jared Leto, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water opposite Ciaran Hinds, David Cronenberg’s Existenz, Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words and My Life Without Me (Canadian Screen Award, Best Actress), Audrey Wells’ Guinevere, Wim Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking, Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim, and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

In 2022, Polley released Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, an autobiographical collection of essays detailing her relationship with her body and how her memory of past and present experiences have contributed to her evolving understanding of self.