Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan's Ammonite to close 64th BFI London Film Festival

Period romance _Ammonite_, directed by Francis Lee, will bring down the curtains on the 64th British Film Institute London Film Festival, the festival organisers announced on Wednesday, 26 August. Starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, the film will have its UK premiere on 17 October and will be available to the audiences at cinemas across the country. Here’s the announcement

Closing Film of #LFF 2020 announced! Ammonite, directed by Francis Lee and starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, will close this year's Festival at BFI Southbank and in cinemas across the UK on 17 October https://t.co/DxScYj7OVh pic.twitter.com/caNWN4T9k1

— BFI (@BFI) August 26, 2020

Set in a UK coastal town in the 1820s, Ammonite follows an unlikely romance between palaeontologist Mary Anning (Winslet) and a London woman of means (Ronan) to whom she must unexpectedly play nursemaid. Billed as a heartfelt love-story and an examination of gender, class and society, the film brings to life in vivid detail the life of a woman unappreciated in her own time. Anning, who grew up in poverty in the Lyme Regis, the county of Dorset in Southwest England, was a pioneering palaeontologist and passionate fossil collector whose findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking around the prehistory of the Earth. She was named as one of the most influential women in British scientific history by the Royal Society after her death. “I’m thrilled Ammonite has been chosen to close the BFI London Film Festival. In these incredibly difficult times, it’s wonderful to see this film about intimacy, love and hope getting its UK premiere at LFF,” Lee, who is best known for God’s Own Country, said in a statement. Tricia Tuttle, BFI London Film Festival director, said it was a pleasure to have Lee close the Festival with his second feature. “Francis has the ability to place love stories of breathtaking intimacy within a rich socio-political context, always with a delicate touch, and here offers reflections on class difference and the erasure of women from scientific history,” she added. The Festival, which takes place from 7 to 18 October, will open with another true-life period story in Steve McQueen’s Mangrove. Ammonite is slated to release in theatres in 2021. (With inputs from Press Trust of India)