Warning: this article contains reference to rape and sexual abuse.

If you’re a fan of literary adaptations, take note – there’s another brilliant title to add to the long list of books currently being made into films and TV shows.

This time, it’s Miriam Toews’ Women Talking getting the Hollywood treatment. The book, which was named a Best Book Of The Year by The New York Times Book Review when it was first published back in 2018, is based on a harrowing true crime that took place in a remote religious Mennonite colony between 2005-2009.

And now, four years since its release, the book is being made into a film with a star-studded cast and crew. Here’s everything we know about Women Talking so far. 

What is Women Talking about? 

While Women Talking is based on a true crime case, the book itself is an “imagined response” to the events that took place.

The crime in question took place in a remote religious Mennonite colony in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. 

Over the course of four years, over a hundred women and girls (some as young as three) were knocked unconscious and raped – often repeatedly – by what many thought were ghosts or demons.

Eventually, however, two men were caught trying to break into a neighbour’s house in the middle of the night, and the truth was revealed. 

The string of attacks had been orchestrated by a gang of men, who would spray whole families with an animal anaesthetic before attacking the women. In 2011, eight of the men involved were brought to trial and found guilty.

Women Talking is an imagined response about how the women of the colony responded after the men were first arrested. 

As the book’s official synopsis reads: “Eight women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their colony and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in, meet secretly in a hayloft with the intention of making a decision about how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

“They have two days to make a plan, while the men of the colony are away in the city attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists (not ghosts, as it turns out, but local men) and bring them home.”

The synopsis continues: “How should we live? How should we love? How should we treat one another? How should we organise our societies? These are questions the women in Women Talking ask one another.” 

The film, which comes from the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sarah Polley and premiered at at the Telluride Film Festival last month, will take a very different approach to portraying sexual assault.

“In Women Talking, a group of women, many of whom disagree on essential things, have a conversation to figure out how they might move forward together to build a better world for themselves and their children,” Polley said of her film.

“Though the backstory behind the events in Women Talking is violent, the film is not. We never see the violence that the women have experienced. We see only short glimpses of the aftermath. Instead, we watch a community of women come together as they must decide, in a very short space of time, what their collective response will be.”

Who’s starring in Women Talking? 

The film’s central cast is home to a number of famous faces.

They include Rooney Mara (The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo), Frances McDormand (Nomadland), Claire Foy (The Crown) and Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose), alongside Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Ben Whishaw.

August Winter, Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett will also make their feature film debuts.

Is there a trailer for Women Talking?

There is indeed, and it’s a hard-hitting watch.

“Why does love, the absence of love, the end of love, the need for love result in so much violence?” ponders Rooney Mara’s character at the beginning of the trailer.

We then see scenes of children playing in the fields and a young girl with marks on her legs being consoled in bed by an older woman.

As the women of the community meet to discuss what to do in the aftermath of sexual assault perpetrated by the colony’s men, opinions clash.

“It is a part of our faith to forgive,” says Frances McDormand’s character. “We will be forced to leave the colonies if we don’t forgive these men”.

But other women are adamant that they will not stay silent in the face of violence.

“We know that we’ve not imagined these attacks,” says a furious Claire Foy, who can be seen at one point attempting to break into a locked shed with a scythe. “We know that we are bruised, and terrified”.

“We have been preyed upon like animals. Maybe we should respond like animals,” adds Sheila McCarthy, who portrays one of the community’s older women.

 When will Women Talking be released?

Women Talking premieres in select cinemas on 2 December and will be receive a wider release on 25 December.

Images: MGM; Universal Pictures; Faber & Faber