The film will be introduced by Mariecke van den Berg.
Women Talking
The year is 2010. In an isolated Mennonite community, a woman wakes up one morning to discover bruises and wounds on her hips and inner thighs. These are unmistakably the marks left by rape. And she is not the only one. The women and girls discover that men within the community have been using cattle tranquillisers to subdue and rape them. The perpetrators are arrested and end up behind bars in a nearby town. The other men leave for that town in an attempt to secure the release of their fellow believers on bail. The women now have two days to decide what to do next: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. But they cannot reach a decision, so in the end eleven women have to make the final call.
In 2018, Canadian author Miriam Toews published the novel Women Talking about a high-profile large-scale rape case within a Mennonite community in Bolivia. Sarah Polley has adapted the novel into a film with a strong cast, consisting mainly of women, including Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand.
Mariecke van den Berg is a professor of religion, gender and sexuality at the School of Religion and Theology (Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences). As a feminist and queer theologian, she is interested in art and popular culture that questions dominant religious representations.
