Sarah Polley, the only filmmaker nominated for best film at the Oscars: "The Academy has ignored the great year of black female directors"

The announcement of her double Oscar nomination caught Sarah Polley (Toronto, 44 ​​years old) where it is forbidden to make a fuss.

“I found out in the waiting room just before I went into my doctor's office.

It was pretty weird.

I guess I left home without expecting this to happen, ”she explains in a telematic conversation, relaxed and comfortable on the elegant headboard of her bed in a hotel in Los Angeles.

That will be her makeshift home for the next two weeks, until the ceremony in which she will find out if

, the third film he has directed and co-written, adapting the novel by Miriam Toews, also a Canadian, won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay or best film.

She is the only filmmaker in front of the nine directors who accompany her in the highest category of this edition.

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Starring Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara and Jessie Buckley,

is inspired by the true story of attacks on the Bolivian Mennonite community in Manitoba.

A court found nine men guilty in 2011 of raping dozens of elderly women, girls and women in their group while they slept sedated with a powerful anesthetic for animals.

As in Toews's novel, the film imagines the response plan of the women of that archaic and agricultural community when their rapists (cousins, uncles and husbands) return from testifying and are placed in provisional prison.

Paradoxically, the only filmmaker on the Olympus of the Oscars this 2023 arrives with a film that is a Socratic dialogue between women in rebellion against that system made so that men always win, hoard power and deny their capacity for agency.

Something that no one would dare question this multifaceted creator (she has been an actress, essayist, producer, director and screenwriter).

I would give her life for

.

A tremendously political one full of script twists.

Trailer for "They Talk"

Judith Ivey as Agata and Claire Foy as Salome in 'They Talk'.Photo: Michael Gibson (Universal Pictures)

Daughter of British actor Michael Polley and actress and casting director Diane Polley, the creator entered the industry at the age of four as an actress for the Disney factory.

At eight, she feared for her life and was left traumatized by the chaotic filming of

under Terry Gilliam's orders.

At 12, she was blacklisted by Disney, with whom she continued to work to this point, for wearing an anti-war T-shirt (and refusing to take it off) at an awards show during the Gulf War.

Active in political demonstrations since she was 14 years old, she worked for Atom Egoyan, Michael Winterbottom or Isabel Coixet, among many others.

She jumped into directing her in 2006 with

, a story based on a short story by Alice Munro with Julie Christie as the protagonist.

After directing Michelle Williams in

(2011), she would launch into the documentary with

.

In that work, she revealed the discovery of her true biological father, Harry Gulkin, a Canadian producer with whom her mother had an affair.

Polley had been on a decade-long creative hiatus from filmmaking after a concussion she suffered in a swimming pool near her Toronto home in the fall of 2015. It was severe enough to leave her bedridden for weeks and brain damage for years.

Part of that experience she narrated in

, a collection of essays inspired by the phrase that the doctor repeated to her during her recovery: "Do not settle in the safe zone, run towards danger."

She is more than ready to keep doing it.

Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Claire Foy and director Sarah Polley, during the filming of 'They Talk'.Michael Gibson (Michael Gibson)

“The other day I heard Emma Thompson tell how her Oscar nominations wore her down and made her sick.

Although I totally understand what she's saying, and I'm a little embarrassed to say this, I'm finding this awards campaign very exciting.

She had not filmed for ten years, at home with three children, and I was missing these very interesting conversations thanks to this film, ”she clarifies, apologizing if what she says sounds“ not cool ”at the beginning of the

.

Ask.

More than promoting his film, on Twitter he has denounced that directors such as Alice Diop (

), Gina Prince-Bythewood (

) or Chinonye Chukwu (

) were not nominated.

Answer.

This has been a great year, a very powerful one for women filmmakers and specifically Black women filmmakers.

I was hoping the Academy would recognize that work and not ignore it, but we all know these things don't always follow the logic they should.

Those films are fantastic, I am convinced that they will have a very long life and will be remembered beyond not having been nominated.

Ben Whishaw is August, Rooney Mara is Ona and Claire Foy is Salome in Sarah Polley's third film.Michael Gibson (Michael Gibson)

Q.

In

n recovers a key phrase from the original novel: "This is a reaction of fiction as an act of female imagination."

The recording, in a way, was.

Is it true that you reduced the shooting day to adapt to family reconciliation?

A.

Yes, although people are very scared of change, especially if you want to do something that hasn't been done before.

Even me, who came from being a very controlling and obsessive filmmaker.

This film has been very different, with a collective process in which, regardless of genre or position, from the script to shooting and editing, we contribute and change things on the fly with a lot of collaboration.

Frances McDormand, who produces the film, at a moment in 'They Talk'.Michael Gibson (Michael Gibson)

Q.

I understand that Frances McDormand, who also produces the film, warned you in the first emails they exchanged that this was also a film about women making films in a different way.

A.

Yes, it helped a lot to have her along with Dede Gardner as producers because they are willing to break the rules and reinvent the wheel.

They are not afraid of change or doing something new and that is why I think they are so successful.

Having them on our side was great, but that doesn't take away the fear of change.

The truth is that it inspired me when I worked as an actress in Spain and saw that there you have civilized working hours on set.

Q.

Was it when you filmed with Isabel Coixet?

A.

Yes, in

.

We finished almost in the middle of the day, while here the usual thing is to spend 17 or 18 hours straight.

In North America we have a habit of asking ourselves all the time “Did you sleep well?”

because most people, from working late (even when they get home), don't.

During that shoot I asked everyone every morning and I remember that, at the end, they said to me, surprised: “Why do you always ask that?

You're so weird!"

Sarah Polley and Rooney Mara, on the set of 'They Talk'.Michael Gibson (Michael Gibson)

Q.

Are you comfortable that

has been labeled as a MeToo movie?

R.

I don't think it's about MeToo.

It is a timeless fable that could have been told 40 years ago or in the future.

When I read the novel it was the height of the movement, but I felt that this text made that conversation much richer and more elaborate.

Rather than identify the damage, it takes a bird's eye view back to address the tough questions, looking ahead and asking what we want to build, not just what we want to destroy.

Q.

Here, in fact, forgiveness is investigated, the validity of pacifism and it is emphasized that not all men are aggressors.

R.

It is curious because although I am on Twitter, it seems that I did not pay enough attention to know that in there the "Not All Men" was a very politicized slogan against Me Too.

I didn't mean to say it with that connotation, but of course I think that not all men are like that.

The big misconception about feminism is to think that it is anti-masculine.

It is not.

Inequality benefits no one.

It's just about justice and equality.

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Q.

In your essay

you wrote about why you did not join the four women who denounced the famous radio host Jian Gomeshi for sexual assault three years before MeToo, despite having lived a traumatic experience with him .

Did you break that silence moved by the novel on which this film is based?

A.

I planned to write that essay for many, many years.

It was a creative process between the film and the rehearsal.

Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Rooney Mara, Sheila McCarthy, Jessie Buckley, Michelle McLeod, Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett in "They Talk".LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy

Q.

Did making this film move you a lot or were you able to separate your personal experience from the work?

A.

I have thought about many experiences that I have had as a woman when approaching the film.

Obviously, it's all there, and it's part of how I think about these things, but unfortunately, like so many other women, I've had those experiences that are relevant to this film.

Q.

What would you say to those who believe that

is about women?

R.

Well, this is about all of us.

We are experiencing a great reaction to feminism and MeToo.

That misogyny is really scandalous, very public, with a large following among young men.

I think a lot about how my children will grow up in this world.

We've come a long way as women, but this backlash is downright terrifying.

We cannot let our guard down or apologize for making progress.

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