One of the most tender, heartfelt debut features the past decade was Francis Lee’s Yorkshire-set drama God’s Own Country. The British director is now back this year with his follow-up Ammonite, which stars Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Picked up by NEON, the romantic drama was set to play Cannes and Telluride, but will now make its world premiere at TIFF next month. Ahead of the debut, the first trailer has now landed.
Set in the 19th century, the story is inspired by the real-life relationship between British paleontologist Mary Anning (Winslet) and Charlotte Murchison (Ronan), who comes with her husband to visit Lyme Regis in England, where Anning is searching for fossil.
“I was very drawn to that period because of this wonderful research into same-sex female relationships of the period that are all very well documented with letters to each other, demonstrating wonderful, life-long, passionate, intense, emotional relationships,” Lee told EW. “And I was fascinated to set this film in a period that was totally patriarchal and where women were completely owned by their fathers or their husbands, and looking at how they live within that world, and also in a world where, at that time, the medical profession believed that women had no sexual-pleasure organs. So, the idea of two women actually in a relationship together was just not a thought anybody ever had within society.”
See the trailer and poster below.
Ammonite will open in theaters on November 13.