The Company of Strangers

The Company of Strangers accompanies a group of older women who are stranded in the countryside after a bus breaks down and form a provisional life together in everyday conversations, memories and small gestures.

This docu-fiction reveals one of the most unusual, but at the same time most interesting depictions of small utopias and community dynamics. With great tenderness and formal calm, Cynthia Scott makes female experience, solidarity and the unspectacular of survival visible. The film intimately invites us to take a brief look at the life stories of its eight very real main characters; in a way, they all play themselves and no one is a supporting character. In this way, Scott gives a face to the hidden reality of everyday women that you would otherwise look for in vain on the big screen. This makes The Company of Strangers a rare, deeply humane film, beyond drama and sensationalism.