Women Talking with actor Sheila McCarthy!

Screening raised funds for Women’s Habitat, which since 1978 has provided help and shelter for women and their children fleeing domestic abuse.

Thank you, Sheila McCarthy for zooming in for our special fund-raising screening of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking on Sunday, June 25 at the Revue Cinema. And thanks to the Revue for supporting this event.

Through our audience contributions, we raised more than $1,500 for Women’s Habitat, an emergency shelter and outreach centre in Etobicoke for more than four decades.

The film’s focus is timely in the era of me-too and most appropriate as a fund-raiser for the Etobicoke women’s shelter: A group of women in an isolated Mennonite community debate their next move in the face of years of violent rape by and complicity of their men folk.

Sheila joined us from Stratford, where she is directing a play with the Here for Now Theatre company. Despite her long list of credits in film, TV and on stage, Sheila confesses to being starstruck by the remarkable cast assembled for Women Talking, including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand (also one of the producers) and Ben Wishaw.

“I was so fangirl with the cast at first and that was daunting to get over,” Sheila told Variety.

Sheila plays Greta Loewen, an elder among the women and girls. She brings a quietness and wisdom “like a good grade school teacher” to their discussion of whether to stay or leave their abusive environment. Greta also lightens the atmosphere with her gentle humour.

Sarah Polley won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for her dramatization of Miriam Toews’s novel of the same name. Women Talking also earned a Best Picture nomination.

For Sheila, the film reveals how sharing stories and talking about the bad things that have happened make it easier to cope. “Out of that comes hope,” she said in her Variety interview.

Watch the trailer.