Knife in the Head

A look behind-the-scenes as the character of Opie Winston.

Based on a true story about an extraordinary woman, who after a traumatizing rape, refuses to remain a victim. Wendy Crewson stars as Jane Doe (as she must legally be called), a woman who discovers she was the fifth victim of a serial rapist terrorizing a two-block area surrounding her home. When she learns that the police department was aware of this dangerous criminal yet decided not to issue a public warning, she feels that she and all the women in the neighbourhood were offered up as bait. Driven to take action, she investigates not only her own case, but also police procedures with regard to rape and its victims, and is shocked by what she discovers: a legal system that is sexist and uncaring. It is then that she decides to take on the Toronto Police Department. What follows for Jane Doe is a grueling 10-year legal battle, which becomes vicious, all-consuming and personal.

Lydia is an overweight sales clerk in a trendy home furnishings store, nearing 30. Though she is a member of a Fat Acceptance Group (a movement dedicated to fighting prejudice against overweight people), she is still struggling with complex feelings about her body and its place in the world. Darcy, a recovering-anorexic real estate agent in her mid-20s, is struggling with the same issues from a very different perspective. Her attempt to join the Fat Acceptance Group (since she sees herself as fat) is quickly rejected - but it introduces her to Lydia. Lydia is initially wary of Darcy's efforts to become friends, but Darcy's hunger for emotional contact breaks through the wall of apparent differences and they begin an unexpected friendship. At the same time Lydia gets involved in a sexual relationship with Bob, an overweight man who joins her in walking for exercise early mornings at Venice beach. Stirred emotionally by this new romance and by her conflict with the Fat Acceptance Group, Lydia decides to ask her new friend for an unusual favor: she wants anorexia lessons. When Darcy lets Lydia inside her secret inner world, it forces both women to confront buried feelings about their bodies. Sexuality and fashion, anger and femininity, trust and fear, hunger and satisfaction: there are things that women can only talk about honestly with other women. But they never seem to find a way to do it. This is a movie about two women who do.

Two mothers must confront the nightmare that their babies have been switched at birth due to a hospital blunder.