Women Talking is nominated for two Oscars at this year's Academy Awards - Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for writer-director Sarah Polley.
It deserved many more nominations.
The adaptation of the Miriam Toews bestseller flips between terrifying and tender as a group of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters in a religious colony debate their next move after it is discovered they have been drugged and raped by husbands, sons, brothers, and neighbours over a prolonged period of time.
Below, stars Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy share their experiences of making the film and how much it means to them.
Is there something that has come into focus now that you have a bit of distance from making the film that wasn't apparent at the time?
Jessie Buckley: I never really know what we're making when you're making it. You're doing it and you can't really be objective about it while you're in it. When I saw the film, it shook me in a way I didn't expect. In some ways, this film, it challenges the stories we've always known. This feels like it could be the beginning of a different origin story for us all and that, actually, we can have agency to change the things that we've inherited in ourselves and actually write our own next chapter.
Claire Foy: I've been really moved and actually amazed, and it's sort of shown me the point of what we do for a living, that our experience of making it was our own experience and is very personal and I will always cherish it. But what I think is so beautiful about this film, more than anything I've ever done, is seeing it go out into the world and live on its own and people's responses to it and the way people interpret the film and our characters and the concept. Whether that's people have differing, challenging opinions towards the movie - all of it, I think, is really incredible. I don't think I'd thought beyond finishing making it - I don't think I ever do - but this has been a really encouraging and really touching experience to see that the sentiment we had making it has also bled out into how people are receiving it as well, which is rare and great.
What has surprised you most about people's responses to Women Talking?
Jessie Buckley: I think a hard response to hear is people saying, (adopts comedic voice) 'Women Talking? Why, women talk all the time! Why would I go see that?!' and actually not thinking about what that means. What has been extraordinary and mindblowing is meeting people who have come out of the cinema after seeing a film like this and be affected in a way that I have never experienced an audience be affected by, you know? People not even knowing why they have been so emotionally moved by this and engaging in a conversation that they didn't know they needed to have. Yeah, I guess those two things.
Claire Foy: I think what Jessie said. It's very confronting when people say it's called Women Talking and therefore they don't want to see it, which has actually been really interesting for me because I think you can seek out the opinion that you want to value or that you want to listen to. And I feel like none of us have had a choice - not necessarily in the reception of this, but in the process of this film - about not hearing the things you don't want to hear. And I don't mean that as in, like, criticising the film or anything or anything like that, but the concept of what this film represents - some people really struggle with engaging with [it].
How difficult was it to go from those moments of really heavy drama to those outbursts of levity between the characters in the same scene?
Jessie Buckley: That felt quite natural. This wasn't just, like, an 'acting thing'. It was like an experience, you know? We were in a hayloft for kind of two months. I think the thing as well: none of us were judging these women. We all understood what these women had maybe kind of gone through - not completely, but we could all relate to it in some shape or form and to each other's perspectives in some shape or form.
In a way, I think, you're standing in front of incredible people every day and you just have to stand in the river and let it take you. The more extreme you went, like from one place to the other, the more exciting it was. Every day you never knew what the person standing in front of you was going to do. And the thrill of working with this calibre of people and actually in real time being changed was... it was just, like, thrilling.
It was such a privilege. It was unlike... and everybody was there for each other 150 times to do one scene sometimes. That kind of generosity and also security because we all cared about each other allowed things to bubble up on either side of that coin.
The 95th Academy Awards take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday night and will be broadcast on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player on Monday from 9:30pm.
Women Talking is in cinemas now.
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