The Company of Strangers

The Company of Strangers (US release title: Strangers in Good Company; French title: Le Fabuleux gang des sept ) is a 1990 Canadian film 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 docufiction, semi-documentary/semi-fiction, 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.

Cast

 * Alice Diabo as Alice, 74, a Mohawk elder from Kahnawake, Quebec,
 * Constance Garneau as Constance, 88, born in the United States and brought to Quebec by her family as a child,
 * Winifred Holden as Winnie, 76, an Englishwoman who moved to Montreal after World War II,
 * Cissy Meddings as Cissy, 76, who was born in England and moved to Canada in 1981,
 * Mary Meigs as Mary, 74, a noted feminist writer and painter and out lesbian,
 * Catherine Roche as Catherine, 68, a Roman Catholic nun,
 * Michelle Sweeney as Michelle, 27, a jazz singer and the bus trip's tour guide,
 * Beth Webber as Beth, 80, who was born in England and moved to Montreal in 1930.

Home media
The DVD was released on December 7, 1999, by First Run Features as Strangers in Good Company. The back of the DVD cover states: "The original Canadian title, "The Company of Strangers" is on the DVD. In every other way it is the exact same film."

Release
The film was distributed by Alliance Distributing in Canada and First Run Features in the United States. It earned $450,000 during its theatrical release in Canada and $1 million in the United States. The Company of Strangers was renamed Strangers in Good Company in the United States to avoid confusion with The Comfort of Strangers.

Accolades
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.

Popularity
Mary Meigs wrote a book about her experience in making the film, In the Company of Strangers (1991).