Women Talking

Polley’s thoughtfully executed adaptation of Miriam Toews’s best-selling novel Women Talking chronicles the aftermath of the arrest of several serial rapists in an isolated Mennonite community whose assaults on generations of women and girls have previously been ignored or denied. A group of women—taking advantage of the absence of the men who have left the area to raise funds to post bail for their fellows—gather in a hayloft to discuss their options in light of what they only now understand to have been systematic criminal abuse. Graced with an extraordinary cast, Women Talking frames a radical “act of female imagination” to consider the healing power of language and what is required to escape oppression and to build a safer, more equitable and caring world.