Project Detail

Ammonite

Synopsis

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild and brutal Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself and her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison, arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a European tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They are two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realisation that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.
Both a heartfelt love-story and an examination of gender, class and society, 'Ammonite' brings to life in vivid detail the life of a woman unappreciated in her own time. A pioneering paleontologist and passionate fossil collector, Anning’s findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking around the prehistory of the Earth and saw her named as one of the most influential women in British scientific history by the Royal Society after her death.
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2020
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Closing Night Gala

Details

Year: 2020
Type of film: Features
Running time: 120 min
Director: Francis Lee
Producer: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly
Executive Producer: Simon Gillis, Mary Burke, Rose Garnett, Zygi Kamasa
Editor: Chris Wyatt
Screenwriter: Francis Lee
Director of Photography: Stéphane Fontaine
Production Designer: Sarah Finlay
Music: Volker Bertelmann, Dustin O'Halloran
Principal cast: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, James McArdle, Alec Secareanu, Fiona Shaw

Genre

LGBTQIA+ Drama

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

A See-Saw Films, BBC Films, BFI production

See-Saw Films

3rd Floor
45 Folgate Street
London
E1 6GL

Visit Website

Sales Company

Cross City Films

3rd Floor
45 Folgate Street
London
E1 6GL

+44 (0)20 3301 6268

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

Spring. Yorkshire. Isolated young sheep farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.<br /> Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Panorama

Drama

The Farmer's Wife

Director: Francis Lee

Year: 2011

The farmer's wife stoically carries out her daily tasks in preparation for what will be her final day on the only land she has known. Unable to accept this forced future, subconscious memories return that ultimately lead her to connect more to the countryside of her youth than ever before.