The Canadian filmmaker, author and actress, Sarah Polley, has been quietly creating an alternative value system to the patriarchal status quo through the way that she makes and talks about filmmaking. Her films – domestic epics – invest great feelings into the transformative events that bubble up in settings historically dismissed by men intent on conquering the wider world. Prime examples include a restless pamphlet writer wrestling with the idea of an affair (Take This Waltz), a man trying to navigate his wife’s Alzheimer’s (Away from Her) and a radically questioning foray into her own family origins (Stories We Tell).
, adapted from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, is based on real attacks that took place by men against women in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia. We talked about the narrow cultural understanding of women who move through trauma, the way the story’s utopian ideas were replicated through its
