Ammonite

Francis Lee’s follow up to his much admired God’s Own Country is another powerful love story in an unforgiving environment. The setting is windswept Dorset, where Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), a flinty, guarded figure, devotes her time to finding and cataloguing the titular fossilised sea creatures, which she sells to make ends meet. Although a renowned palaeontologist, Mary is, as a woman in the mid-19th century, shunned by the scientific community, even as her male counterparts take credit for her work. When one such visitor brings along his grieving wife, Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), then abandons her to Mary’s charity to go traveling, the two women are forced into an uneasy cohabitation, that soon blossoms into a furtive relationship.