NEW YORK — Sarah Polley wasn't really looking for a project to direct when she was approached about adapting Miriam Toews' novel "Women Talking" into a film. Since the release in 2012 of "Stories We Tell," a deeply personal documentary about Polley's late mother, the Canadian filmmaker has spent most of the last decade focused on raising her three children, now 10, 8 and 4.
Though she wrote "Alias Grace," a limited series based on Margaret Atwood's 1996 novel of the same name, Polley had chosen not to direct anything because, she said, "I didn't think I could direct a film with kids the age mine were and be a present parent."
But producers Dede Gardner and Frances McDormand, who wanted a writer-director to steer "Women Talking," made an enticing offer: "'Let's just rewrite the rules,'" Polley recalled them saying. "'Men have written these rules in the film industry and created absurd expectations of hours that are not conducive to families.' I realized they were willing to break a model and build a new one to allow me to come back, and that was a really big deal."
