The French word terroir is used across many languages and cultures to describe the soil and climate factors that give wine its character. Metaphorically, we can look at our human upbringing and the resulting character of various world cultures as ‘terroir’. Factually, we all originate from women, but it is the rare culture that respects or honors this truth. Why do we pervert the vessel of life to its own self-denial?
 

In The Bellwether, to the outside world Joanne (Reid) is just a bookstore owner, but The Conspiracy knows different. She is dangerous. She is a bellwether: a quiet leader who is well on her way to being her whole self. When they kidnap her to break her, to make her conform, they discover that Joanne is something so much more than even she ever knew. The Conspiracy locks Joanne in a 13th century chapel and she communicates with her 'operator' only through text and images shown a television. In order to break her, they work on her hidden pain, the fact that she had an abortion four years ago. After standing up to the mental torture, the Conspiracy goes even farther; impregnating her and trying to force her to have the baby. At the moment when she is about to give in she will either break, or everything will change, for herself and for the Conspiracy.