Francis Lee, Director 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2020, Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, SFFILM 

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Historical Drama, Romance 

Length: 118 minutes 

Field of Science: Anthropology, Biology 

Stage: Completed 

Synopsis 

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist 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 arrives 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 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, 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.