Annual Top Films Lists

Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2020: #37. Ammonite – Francis Lee

Published on January 2, 2020

Ammonite

British director Francis Lee will deliver the high profile drama Ammonite in 2020, which stars Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as a pair of women in 1880s England who embark on an illicit romance. The British-Australian co-production is produced by Iain Canning, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, and Emile Sherman and features a supporting cast of Fiona Shaw, James McArdle, Gemma Jones and Alex Secareanu (who toplined Lee’s God’s Own Country – read review). Lee, who began his career in cinema as an actor (he had a minor role in Mike Leigh’s 1999 Topsy-Turvy) was a major break-out in 2017 with God’s Own Country, which netted him a Best Director award out of Sundance (as well as acclaim in Berlin).

Gist: Winslet stars as fossil hunter Mary Anning, a once notable palaeontologist who discovered Jurassic marine fossil beds but went largely unrecognized and unappreciated due to her gender. Ammonite details her affair with Ronan’s Charlotte Murchison in the 1880s.

Release Date/Prediction: Lee’s production began in March of 2019 and his latest seems a plausible Premiere at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival.

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.