Logline: In the immigrant slums of 1902 New York, five women from clashing worlds forge a revolutionary sisterhood to lead a citywide boycott against a corrupt meat monopoly, proving that the most dangerous weapon is a hungry mother’s will.
Characters:
- SARAH (Angelina Jolie): A Romanian Jewish widow, her grief forged into unyielding steel. The chief strategist, she sees the boycott as a holy war for justice. Her apartment is the movement’s war room.
- ROSA (Nelly Furtado): A Sephardic Jewish singer and seamstress from the Ottoman Empire. The voice and spirit of the resistance, she turns outrage into anthems and orchestrates street-level theatrics that shame scabs and rally the crowds.
- ANNA (Marija Jukic): A Polish Catholic laundress, Sarah’s neighbor. She is the bridge, her raw, physical strength and pragmatic warmth uniting Jewish, Italian, and Irish tenements under the common banner of empty stomachs.
- LILLIAN (Madonna Ciccone): An assimilated German-Jewish heiress and suffragette, intellectually adrift. She provides the movement with capital, printing presses, and a shield of high-society respectability, finding her true voice in the gritty reality of the fight.
- ESTHER (Scarlett Johansson): A “girl Friday” for the Beef Trust’s head lawyer, sharp, observant, and quietly ambitious. The insider. Raised in a poor Jewish orphanage, she’s climbed to a precarious perch in the gentile world. Her loyalty is torn between self-preservation and the community she left behind.
Treatment:
ACT I: THE CUT
The stench of the stockyards hangs over the Lower East Side. SARAH is denied credit at the butcher. ROSA leads a spontaneous, fiery protest that ends with a broken window. ANNA calms her crying child, knowing her wage as a laundress won’t cover stew meat this week. Their separate frustrations ignite into a shared plan during a chaotic street confrontation.
To be taken seriously, they need an insider’s edge. LILLIAN, seeking purpose beyond philanthropy, is recruited by Sarah’s stark conviction. It is Lillian who identifies the key: her family’s lawyer works for the Beef Trust, and his efficient, enigmatic secretary, ESTHER, is seen taking his lunch order.
Rosa and Anna intercept Esther on her walk home. They don’t threaten; they appeal. They show her the hollow-eyed children in their building—children like she once was. Esther’s polished demeanor cracks. She says nothing, but the next day, a confidential memo detailing the Trust’s price-fixing schedule is slipped under Sarah’s door.
ACT II: THE SIMMER
With Esther’s covert intelligence, the boycott is brilliantly orchestrated. They anticipate the Trust’s moves. Sarah organizes block captains. Rosa’s ballads mock the greedy butchers. Anna runs communal kitchens from a Catholic church basement. Lillian manipulates the society pages.
Esther lives a double life, her cool efficiency masking a rising panic. She feeds information on strike-breakers and legal strategies, but her boss, MR. HARRINGTON, begins to suspect a leak. A tense, wordless alliance forms between her and Lillian, who understands the performance of navigating a man’s world.
The Trust retaliates: thugs intimidate picketers, landlords issue eviction notices. The pressure peaks when Harrington, his eyes on Esther, casually mentions the “ringleader” Sarah faces arrest and probable deportation. Esther must choose: protect her hard-won position or fully commit to the rebellion.
ACT III: THE FIRE
At the movement’s darkest hour, Esther arrives at the tenement war room, not with a slip of paper, but with Harrington’s private ledger, detailing bribes to health inspectors and police. “It’s not about price lists anymore,” she says, her voice steady. “It’s about power.”
The women weaponize the ledger. Lillian arranges a meeting with the reform-minded mayor, not as supplicants, but as prosecutors. Sarah presents the evidence. Rosa and Anna mobilize 20,000 women for a silent “March of the Empty Pots” that grinds the city to a halt, the proof of corruption circulating among sympathetic reporters.
The climax is a showdown at the mayor’s office. Harrington is present, smug. He attempts to discredit the women as hysterical and unpatriotic. Esther, whom he brought as his secretary, steps forward. In front of everyone, she confirms the ledger’s authenticity, sacrificing her career and her place in his world with a devastating, calm testimony.
EPILOGUE: THE NOURISHMENT
The Trust is broken. Prices fall. The victory is more than economic. Sarah establishes the first enduring kosher consumer coalition. Rosa records her protest songs. Anna co-founds a cross-community mutual aid society. Lillian, estranged from her old life, becomes a formidable political fundraiser for labor causes.
Esther, blacklisted from law offices, is approached by Sarah. With Lillian’s backing, they need a sharp mind to run their new cooperative butcher shop. The final scene shows the five women, sleeves rolled up, in the modest shop. Esther, no longer just taking orders, is learning to cut meat, smiling as she weighs a fair price for a working mother. The sisterhood, forged in conflict, is now building something lasting.