THE MAD WOMEN’S BALL Q&A | TIFF 2021

The team behind THE MAD WOMEN’S BALL in conversation with TIFF in advance of its premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. The latest from writer-director-actor Mélanie Laurent is a chilling tale of spectral visions and institutional abuse set in 19th-century France. The 46th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 9 to 18, 2021. For more, visit . In The Mad Women’s Ball, actor-director Mélanie Laurent delivers a searing yet sensitive portrait of women enmeshed in a medical system that both misunderstands and fears them. The setting is late 19th-century France and the birth of psychiatry, but the resonances couldn’t be more contemporary. Eugénie Cléry (Lou de Laâge) is a young woman with a free spirit, an independent mind, and a quick tongue — qualities her father will not tolerate. Eugénie also has spectral encounters that leave her staring into space and gasping for breath. She is visited by the spirits of the