Sarah Polley’s film is up for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Writer-director Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel Women Talking stars Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley as Mennonite women grappling with the aftermath of years of drugged sexual assaults.
The women face a huge dilemma: stay within the community that has been drugging and raping them for several years, or leave and abandon their faith.
The Oscar-nominated film is an intelligent and nuanced look at a serious issue – and some viewers may be wondering if the film is based on a true story.
The answer is fairly complicated so, without further ado, read on for everything you need to know.
Is Women Talking based on a true story?
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While Women Talking is not directly based on a true story, it is adapted from a novel of the same name that was inspired by real events.
Toews – who was herself raised in a Mennonite colony in Manitoba – previously described her novel upon which the film is based as “a reaction through fiction” to real-life events which had occurred in Bolivia some years earlier.
Between 2005 and 2009, the women living in the colony in the South American nation reported that they had regularly woken up to discover they had been raped in their sleep, with the men telling them this was the work of ghosts and demons as punishment for their sins.
The women brought charges against the men and eight of them were convicted in 2011, each receiving lengthy prison sentences.
Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com ahead of the film’s release, director Sarah Polley said that when she first read Toews’s novel, “I became captivated by the idea of this as a film and the idea of, could you get the best actors in the world in a room together and have this magnificent conversation that Miriam had crafted?”
She also outlined her process when adapting the film for the screen, explaining: “Something I find really interesting to do with adaptation is after the first read of the book when you think you might want to make it into a film, to go away and write out for yourself what the film is. Just from memory.
“And what I find really interesting about that process is you often go back and realise many of the things that you’ve written in are not actually in the book, but it’s the way you’ve mapped yourself onto the book, or the space between you and the book,” she added.
“You kind of find from that what is sort of non-negotiable or what are the key images, and also where the adaptation lies.”
Women Talking is now showing in UK cinemas. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on, or check out our Film hub for more news and features.
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