«I’m rereading the Weinstein case but without the scenes of violence»- Corriere.it

The most difficult challenge, says Maria Schrader, was not being intimidated by the delicacy of the undertaking. Being able to be faithful to the painful truth of the witnesses and, together with the artistic needs of his film. The German director, appreciated author of the miniseries Unorthodoxshe came to present her Me too, based on the courageous investigation by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, played by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan. The journalistic investigation that – together with the bestseller written by the two authors with Rebecca Corbett, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement — led to the opening of the Pandora’s box of harassment in Hollywood, the birth of the Metoo movement and the indictment and sentence to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault of the man who has become a symbol of that system of abuse, former mogul Harvey Weinstein. “It’s a true story that has had an extraordinary impact around the world. Every character in the film — out in January from Universal, ed — is a real person. The New York Times he opened his editorial office to us, deserted due to Covid, everyone worked remotely. It was the first time this had happened for a fiction film. We have told the true stories of women who have had the courage to break the silence. We have tried to study as much as possible so as not to overlook anything and to make them feel at ease. But it’s a film, not a documentary, the choices I’ve made, starting with the cast, are artistic choices».

It wasn’t easy shooting, he admits. “We experienced many exciting moments, some women involved appear in the film, we also had therapists on the set”. Weinstein’s accusers were asked to cooperate. “Each one felt more at ease, like her.” Some with telephone reconstructions, like Gwyneth Paltrow, others putting their face on it, like Ashley Judd “who first wanted to get to know me personally. In the meantime she has become an activist, and she also wanted to be with us at the first screening at the New York Film Festival ». The film tells the birth of the investigation from the inside. However, it stops in the face of violence. We hear the reports, we don’t see the pictures. «While collecting the testimonies I did not want to show the sexual violence. From the beginning we wondered what to do. Then we thought it was not right to add violence to violence. And we didn’t want attention to focus even for a moment on the perpetrator of this violence. It wouldn’t have been right.” Compared to other films dedicated to investigative journalism – starting with the most famous, All the president’s men — Schrader also shows the private of the reporters. «It was important to underline how different it is to do certain jobs for women. In the case of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the authors of the Watergate scoop, private life didn’t interfere with work. For Kantor and Twohey, as for many women, yes». Their first full-page article appeared in the New York Times on October 5, 2017. A lot has changed since then. «It is as if a dam had broken, driven by the weight of the long silence, by frustration. It has produced very noisy and also confusing results. I don’t judge. That’s how revolutions work».