Sarah Polley Thanks Academy For “Not Being Mortally Offended” By The Words “Women” & “Talking” Following Oscar Win
13.03.2023 - 06:07
/ deadline.com
Sarah Polley won her first Oscar for her Women Talking.
“First of all, just want to thank the Academy for not being mortally offended by the words women and talking with so close together like that,” she said as her film won the award for Writing (Adapted Screenplay).
“Miriam Toews wrote an essential novel about a radical democracy in which people who don’t agree on every single issue managed to sit together in a room and carve out a way forward together free of violence. They do so not just by talking but also by listening,” she added.
RELATED: ‘Women Talking’: Read The Screenplay By Sarah Polley That Takes On Remaking “A Broken World”
Women Talking, which came from Orion Pictures/United Artists Releasing, beat All Quiet on the Western Front, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Living and Top Gun: Maverick in the category.
The win prevented All Quiet On The Western Front, which has been gaining momentum through the night, from becoming the first non-English language film to win the award.
Women Talking was written and directed by Polley. It is based on Toews’ eponymous book and is inspired by real events that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia.
Polley’s feature film directorial debut Away From Her was also nominated in this category in 2008, but she lost out to Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country For Old Men.
Women Talking follows the women of an isolated religious colony who reveal a shocking secret about the colony’s men: for years, the men have occasionally drugged the women and raped them. The truth comes out and the women talk about finding a solution to their situation.
It stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Judith Ivey, Sheila