It features an ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand, who also served as a producer on the film.

[9][10] A young woman sleeping alone in bed wakes to find bruises and wounds on her hips and upper inner thighs—injuries sustained from rape.

Eleven of the colony's women are chosen to come to a final decision and gather in a hayloft, though Scarface Janz, a woman in the "do nothing" camp, leaves the meeting after becoming disillusioned with the discussion, taking her hesitant daughter Anna and resistant granddaughter Helena with her.

Salome, just back from a trip to gather antibiotics to treat her assaulted four-year-old daughter, remains adamant about staying and fighting, an opinion shared by Mejal.

Ona, who is pregnant after being raped, also suggests that they stay and, after winning the fight, create a new set of rules for the colony that would give the women equality.

During the break, it is revealed that August is from an excommunicated family, but was recently granted permission to return and teach the boys of the colony.

When some of the women go outside to be counted for the 2010 census, they learn that Klaas, Mariche's abusive husband, will return that evening to collect more bail money.

Salome remains insistent upon fighting, angrily confessing that she would rather kill the men than put her daughter at risk any longer.

August, at Ona's behest, posts the documents stating the pros and cons of leaving and staying on the walls as an "artifact" of the women's time in the colony.

Before they can leave, Nettie, who has adopted a male identity and the name Melvin after a brutal incestuous rape and now rarely speaks except to the colony's children, tells Salome that her teenage son Aaron has fled and hidden.

[12] In June 2021, Ben Whishaw, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy and Michelle McLeod joined the cast of the film.

[15][16][17][18] Costume designer Quita Alfred procured some fabric and prayer coverings from an actual Mennonite community store, using differing colors and patterns for each family to represent certain traits they held as a unit.

[19] Alfred noted that "trying to convince world-class actresses to wear long-sleeve polyester dresses in 110 degree heat was a challenge.

In Deadline Hollywood, United Artists Releasing cited the proximity of Christmas and the nationwide impact of Winter Storm Elliott as contributing factors.

The site's critics consensus reads: "While Women Talking sometimes forsakes entertaining drama in favor of simply getting its points across, its message is valuable -- and effectively delivered.

[34] Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times described it as "a movie that deliberately hovers between drama and parable, the materially concrete and the spiritually abstract, and whose stark austerity sometimes gives way to bursts of salty wit and cathartic laughter".

[36] Mae Abdulbaki of Screen Rant gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars, calling it a "riveting adaptation" with "great" and "phenomenal" performances.