The drama, which was directed by Sarah Polley, follows a group of Mennonite women who have been drugged and raped by men in their colony for years.
At first, they were made to believe that they had imagined the incidents but after catching one man before the act they were able to finally learn the truth.
Set in the modern day, the film is based on a real-life case and actor Claire Foy told Newsweek how important it was to have this story told, even through a fictional lens.
The Crown star spoke alongside her colleagues Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Liv McNeil, and Kate Hallett.
Claire Foy on the Shocking True Story Behind the Film
Women Talking is based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, but the story itself is loosely inspired by events that really took place in a Mennonite colony in Cotoca, Bolivia, where, in 2009, it was revealed that a group of men had raped and sexually assaulted 151 women and girls.
According to a report from the BBC in 2019, seven men were convicted and given a 25-year prison sentence in August 2011, while one man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for providing the men with the drugs used on their victims.
Foy, who plays Salome in the film, shared how she was not familiar with Toews novel before signing onto the adaptation but that she’s since found it “a really amazing thing to now know Miriam’s work.”
“The first thing I knew about it, it wasn’t actually even the book, it was an article about the attacks that had happened in Bolivia, which is what the book is based upon,” Foy said. “So, that was my first introduction to the story, the actual real-life events.”
“I think it’s important that it’s been made at all, to be honest,” Foy added, when reflecting on the film and the story behind it. “It’s been made now because it’s been able to be made now: it would not have be made 10 years ago.
“I think it’s in the right hands, it’s been directed by Sarah who is extraordinary and Dede [Gardner] and Frances [McDormand] have produced it, and I don’t think you could get a better group of creative people to make this film responsibly and sensitively.”
Foy added: “I struggle with the idea that it’s been made because of a movement or a period of time instead of just realizing that it is all time, like these stories [and] experiences of women like this, or any kind of marginalized, oppressed group of people, are continual and forever.
“So, it’s been made because it exists, basically. It’s just that no one’s really cared to investigate it before, which is makes me sad.”
As well producing, McDormand also stars in the film alongside Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw and more.
‘Women Talking’ Cast on the Film’s Approach to Trauma
One thing the film does, as Foy said, is that it approaches the characters trauma with sensitivity. The traumatic experiences that the women go through are clear without having to show the event itself.
Foy reflected on the way in which Polley approached these scenes, saying: “I think that gratuity around sexual violence or abuse [in cinema], I feel like those films haven’t been made by survivors of domestic violence or abuse or sexual abuse, that’s all you need to know really.
“The truth, like what experiencing a trauma like that does to a human being, or a community like this, is what Sarah was interested in exploring.
“I don’t think she was interested in portraying those acts, she was interested in memory. What happens to memory when you experience a trauma like that, what happens to the body, what happens to the mind, what happens to the spirit, what happens to the soul?
“And those are things that she was interested in exploring, she didn’t want to fetishize something that has been fetishized for years and years and years in cinema already.”
McCarthy, who plays Greta in the film, concurred, saying: “The takeout was it’s an act of female imagination, and I think that word ‘imagination’ is something that Sarah took very seriously, that we didn’t need to see the graphic assaults that we all experienced, just the hints of them were much more impactful.”
Ivey, who takes on the role of elder Agata, said of the story: “I loved how human it was, how they fought, they laughed, they cried. They shared, they said ’now let’s have coffee’. It just always felt very real.”
McLeod’s character Mejal puts on a strong front, but her trauma exhibits itself through anxiety and debilitating panic attacks that leave her unable to breathe. This, the actor said, was an interesting challenge to portray: “I think I related it directly to my own experience with anxiety, and when you first have anxiety, and you don’t understand it, you do try to hide it, right? You try to make sure everything’s okay.
“You don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to show any weakness or that something is happening internally, especially if you don’t understand it, and when that builds up, it comes out in different ways.
“And, for Mejal, it comes out in panic attacks, and you don’t understand a panic attack until you truly have one, but it feels like you’re having a heart attack, that you’re gonna die, your life is flashing before your eyes. And for Mejal instead of the life, the beauty, it’s the trauma that flashes in front of her eyes.”
By comparison, Hallett and McNeil’s Autje and Neitje are the comic relief of the film, with McNeil saying she enjoyed being the “funny” characters, while Hallett said: “I think we had a really great time on set getting to be the fun ones, and there were a few moments in there that were kind of us just messing around and being the comic relief.”
Foy went on to heap praise on her co-stars, saying working alongside them felt like a “once in a lifetime experience” for her.
“I’m so lucky that in my job I am put into circumstances like that, but I do genuinely feel this is a once-in-a-lifetime [film], a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said. “I would hope not but, at the same time, I would be incredibly happy to have these memories with these women, and these actors, and filmmakers.
“I’m so grateful for that, so I don’t expect to have it again […] I just think they’re all so special, and everyone is unique and brilliant.”
Women Talking opens in select theaters Friday, December 23, it then expands wide on January 6, and is in theaters everywhere January 27.
