Peace is more than a wish when women talk

BY ANNA VOGT

Almost the whole movie Women Talking takes place in a barn. Women, sitting on hay bales, talk about how to respond to terrible violence.

When I enthusiastically describe the film’s premise to my friends, they roll their eyes. Director Sarah Polley calls Women Talking a “fable” or an imaginary response to real incidents of sexual violence in Low German Mennonite colonies in Bolivia. Why would we want to watch something that seems to be equal parts boring and horrific?

When I saw the film, I didn’t see a fable. To me, it was far from imaginary. Rather, I saw the story of countless communities and groups I have been honoured to know, coming together to decide how to respond after unimaginable violence—not only imagined, but real and enacted. I walked out of the theatre mulling about themes of forgiveness, faith and nonviolence, and how those themes show up in my own life.

My mind wandered back to the years I spent in Mampuján, Colombia. On occasional lazy days, when it was too hot to do anything but chat, I would sit under a shade tree with my neighbours and community leaders, talking about life. Most of the time, it was about the ordinary stuff that consumed our days: how the crops were doing, the latest church gossip, a funny anecdote about someone’s kid.

Every so often people would talk about the past: the horrors of la violencia and the agonizing choice about whether or not they would forgive the men who had ordered their displacement. Many of those conversations happened as the women of the community gathered to talk and share their stories.

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