Jessie Buckley joins star-studded cast of Women Talking, based on Miriam Toews' novel

Kerry actress Jessie Buckley has been cast opposite Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Ben Whishaw in Women Talking, an adaptation of the 2018 Miriam Toews novel of the same name.

According to Deadline, the forthcoming film from director Sarah Polley (Take This Waltz, Away from Her) tells the story of "a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men".

Nine men in a close-knit Bolivian community had been breaking into houses every few nights, spraying the sleeping women and children with a drug designed to anaesthetise cattle and raping them while they lay unconscious. This real-life horror story inspired Miriam Toews’s scorching sixth novel.

Set in the fictional Mennonite colony of Molotschna, where nearly every girl and woman has been raped, Toews skips over the rapes and the apprehension of the rapists, cutting straight to existential questions facing the women in the aftermath.

Plan B, Brad Pitt's production company, is bringing Women Talking to the screen.

Buckley is one of Ireland's most exciting rising stars following her eye-catching work in films like Wild Rose, Misbehaviour, the upcoming The Courier and Chernobyl.

Killarney native Buckley was most recently seen in Fargo and Charlie Kaufman's quirky 2020 Netflix movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things. The 31-year-old has also been tapped to star in Alex Garland's new sci-fi film Men alongside Rory Kinnear, according to news from January.

Check out our August 2020 interview with Buckley on starring in Kaufman's film here.

Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy & Ben Whishaw will star in WOMEN TALKING.

The film follows women in an isolated religious colony who struggle to reconcile their faith after a series of sexual assaults.

(Source: Deadline) pic.twitter.com/Ht1nuUNgAg

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) June 16, 2021