After Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual misconduct and an inquiry was launched, it spawned the #MeToo movement and altered the Hollywood scene forever in 2017. Soon, the world will be able to watch a film about the reporters who conducted the investigation.
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) has announced that the global premiere of She Said, a drama film about the undercover reporters who exposed Weinstein’s misdeeds, will take place during the festival this September. Carey Mulligan (Inside Llewyn Davis) and Zoe Kazan (The Plot Against America) have been cast as investigative journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor for The New York Times, respectively.
Their work was instrumental in revealing Weinstein’s alleged 30-year pattern of sexual misconduct with actresses and other young women in the entertainment industry. The movie was inspired by the authors’ 2019 book of the same name, which detailed the case against Weinstein that had been built up over several years. The case against Weinstein was strengthened by the research of Twohey and Kantor and the testimonies of several of his victims. Both ladies would be honoured with Pulitzer Prizes for their contributions to literature. The former Hollywood producer was found guilty of seven charges of rape and sexual assault in the third degree.
Currently, he is in prison to serve a term of 23 years. Maria Schrader is a German writer and filmmaker best known for helming the critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries Unorthodox, helmed the film. Though She Said will undoubtedly be her most well-known work to date, Schrader has been a fixture in the German film and television business for quite some time. She is also an actor, and she starred in the 2015 SundanceTV series Deutschland 83, which made history as the first German-language series to run on a U.S. network.
The film by Schrader will be included as a Spotlight presentation at the New York Film Festival. “[a] curated mix of world premieres, films by famed auteurs, a selection of must-see documentaries, and a one-of-a-kind evening of cinema and music,” as described by NYFF, sums up these handpicked flicks. Also screening in the Spotlight section of the festival are Till, a biopic about the life of lynching victim Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, and Bones and All, a drama film starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as a couple of drifters on a cross-country trek. After premiering at NYFF in early October, She Said will be in cinemas on November 18.
Synopsis
Carey Mulligan, a two-time Oscar nominee, and Zoe Kazan play New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, respectively, broke one of the most important stories in a generation. Their reporting on sexual assault in Hollywood helped ignite the #MeToo movement and smashed decades of taboo.