The Company of Strangers
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The Company of Strangers (a/k/a Strangers in Good Company) is a Canadian docudrama film, released in 1990. The film was directed by Cynthia Scott, and written by Scott, Sally Bochner, David Wilson and Gloria Demers. The film depicts eight women on a bus tour, who are stranded at an isolated cottage when the bus breaks down.
The film is not tightly scripted; the writers wrote a basic story outline but allowed the eight women to improvise their dialogue. Each of the women, all but one of whom were senior citizens, told stories from her own life. At various points throughout the film, a montage of photos from each woman's life is shown.
The women are:
- Alice Diabo, 74, a Mohawk elder from Kahnawake, Quebec,
- Constance Garneau, 88, born in the United States and brought to Quebec by her family as a child,
- Winifred Holden, 76, an Englishwoman who moved to Montreal after World War II,
- Cissy Meddings, 76, who was born in England and moved to Canada in 1981,
- Mary Meigs, 74, a noted feminist writer and painter,
- Catherine Roche, 68, a Roman Catholic nun,
- Michelle Sweeney, 27, a jazz singer,
- Beth Webber, 80, who was born in England and moved to Montreal in 1930.
[edit] Awards
The film won the Best Canadian film award at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Grand Prize and Interfilm awards at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in 1990.
At the 12th Genie Awards in 1991, Diabo and Meddings were nominated for Best Actress, Holden and Roche were nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and the film was nominated for Best Picture. The film won the Genie Award for Best Film Editing.
Meigs published a book about her experiences making the film, In the Company of Strangers, in 1991.
