| The Company of Strangers | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Cynthia Scott |
| Produced by | David Wilson / National Film Board of Canada |
| Written by | Gloria Demers |
| Starring | Alice Diabo Constance Garneau |
| Music by | Marie Bernard |
| Cinematography | David De Volpi |
| Editing by | David Wilson |
| Distributed by | First Run Features Castle Hill Productions National Film Board of Canada |
| Release date(s) | May 10, 1991 |
| Running time | 101 min. |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
The Company of Strangers (US release title: Strangers in Good Company; French title: Le Fabuleux gang des sept[1]) is a Canadian film, released in 1990. It 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.
Created in a genre defined as semi-documentary/semi-fiction,[2] 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. A major theme of the film is how the elderly women each face aging and mortality in their own way, and find the courage together to persevere.
At various points throughout the film, a montage of photos from each woman's life is shown.
The women are:
Meigs published a book about her experiences making the film, In the Company of Strangers, in 1991.
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.