:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/4YRVJNNJEGILK6FNAEMBWG7D7Y.jpg "‘Ellas Hablan,’ Miriam Toews’ Oscar-winning story of female resilience")
On the night of March 12, 2023, the 95th edition of the Oscars. Among the most anticipated awards was Category A Best Adapted Screenplay. This time the director took it Sarah Polly by the band “They speak”. This film brought to the cinema the homonymous story written by the Canadian Miriam Toews in 2018. In this story, the author looked at the systematic rapes of more than 150 women from a Mennonite village in Bolivia.
“I want to thank the academy for not being offended by the words Mujeres and Hablando, so close to each other. Miriam wrote a novel about an act of democracy in which people can sit, even if they don’t agree. They can move forward without any violence. They can do it not just by talking, but also by listening,” Sarah Polley said at the ceremony. Oscar 2023.
In the novel, Toews uses non-fiction to tell what happened between 2005 there 2009, when at least 151 women from a Mennonite colony established in Bolivian territory were drugged and raped by eight men from the same community, among the victims were many girls. In They speak In her lines, the author presents what would happen if these women met to talk about what they were forbidden to do, about their own destiny.
The story takes place in the remote town of Molotschnain its pages Cities reconstructs the nights they slept and the mornings when pain and bleeding appeared. Faced with reports of what was happening, the communal authorities insisted that it was all a figment of their imagination, or that it could all have been the work of the devil.
“The scriptures are interpreted by male elders in a way that dehumanizes women and empowers men. Colonias are self-governing, meaning no outside help is available when these types of crimes occur. So, of course, it’s no surprise that they went on for so long,” Sarah Polley said in an interview with The country.
In “They speak” the writer speaks of these rapists belonging to the community itself, including uncles, brothers or neighbors, who, although they ended up in prison, were later released on bail and returned home. The eight voices of victims they meet in secret to describe the decision that will determine their future.
Women don’t know if they should walk away Molotschna or respond with violence. The protagonists of “They speak” they start fighting and exposing their doubts, anger and aspirations. In its pages, Toews writes a work of resilience, in which she confronts the reader not only with the reality of these women, but with that of herself, who in the past escaped from her own commune.
“Although the story behind the events of Ellas Hablan is violent, the film is not. We never see the violence the women have suffered. We only see brief glimpses of the aftermath. Instead , we see a community of women coming together and having to decide, in a very short period of time, what their collective response will be. Sarah Polley in interview with publicity meter.
Register They speak is featured Rooney Mara (The Alley of Lost Souls), Claire Foy (The Crown), y Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge). With Ben Whishaw, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett.
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