VIEWING REGION: Canada

Margaret Atwood has never been more relevant than she is today. Readers are turning to her work as they face the rise of authoritarian politics, rapidly evolving technologies, and the slow-motion disaster of climate change. Her poetry and books are about survival, but they are also survival tools themselves. 

The recent success of the television adaptation of her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has made Atwood a household name. The launch of her sequel, The Testaments, has been international news. Millions follow Atwood’s early morning Tweets. Yet few know the private Margaret Atwood. Who is the woman behind these stories? How does she always seem to know what is to come? 

For a year our film crew had exclusive access to Atwood and her late partner Graeme Gibson, as they travelled to speaking engagements around the world. Margaret was enthusiastically welcomed by crowds of all ages.

We accompanied Atwood to the set of The Handmaid’s Tale, where she met lead actor Elisabeth Moss and Ane Crabtree, costume designer of the blood-red robes worn by protesters around the world. 

The film also delves into Margaret Atwood’s “backstory”, growing up in the Canadian wilderness, her early days as a poet at Harvard where she met and married a classmate, later meeting her life-partner Graeme Gibson and writing The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s major works are explored and threaded through the film, revealing the personal and societal factors that inform her stories. Stories are shared by closest friends and family and, of course, directly by Atwood herself. We spent time with her, as she completed the final chapters of her much-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale - a rare glimpse into the writer’s practice, as she wrote on planes, boats and on the road.