SARAH POLLEY HADN’T made a film in nearly a decade when Women Talking — anovel by Miriam Toews, about a group of Mennonite women who debate whether or not to leave their abusive community — landed in her lap. “I hadn’t been motivated to direct anything since my kids were born,” she explains. (Her last film as director was the award-winning 2012 documentary Stories We Tell.) “A friend of mine gave me the book and said, ‘You should make this into a film.’” By eerie coincidence, Frances McDormand — who had optioned the rights to the book as a producer — had the same thought, and reached out to Polley a week later.