EXCLUSIVE: One of the buzzier titles set to debut at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival is Lilies Not For Me , the first feature from American filmmaker Will Seefried, which we can share a first-look clip from above.
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Set in 1920s England, the film follows a gay novelist and his psychiatric nurse who form an unlikely friendship over a series of doctor-prescribed ‘dates’. Through their conversations, he tells her the story of his relationship with an old friend which spiraled out of control when they turned to a risky procedure to cure themselves of their forbidden feelings for one another.
The film stars Fionn O’Shea ( Normal People ), Robert Aramayo ( The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power ), Erin Kellyman ( The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ), Louis Hofmann ( Dark ), and Jodi Balfour ( Quarry ). Producers are Hannes Otto, Roelof Storm, Will Seefried, Naima Abed, and Emilie Georges. Memento International is handling the pic.
Director Seefried is best known for his short film Homesick (2022), which premiered at SXSW and went on to win the Short of the Year Audience Award. The film was a Vimeo Staff Pick and won Best Midnight Madness at the Oscar-qualifying festival Hollyshorts. He is a co-founder of Wolflight Films, a production banner based in Los Angeles and Cape Town where he most recently served as Executive Producer on two upcoming films for Amazon Prime Video. He is currently developing multiple projects, including a series and a feature with Sue Naegle.
Seefried has said the inspiration for Lilies Not For Me came from research where he discovered the history of a “shocking procedure from the 1920s which claimed to ‘cure’ homosexuality.”
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“This history struck me as a chilling expression of the violence that queer people still endure to this day, while evoking the books and films that were most influential to me as a young person — haunting period romances with queer relationships at their center, like James Baldwin’s masterpiece Giovanni’s Room , Todd Haynes’ Carol , and Merchant Ivory’s Maurice , to name a few,” Seefried said.
“I wanted to make my debut feature in this tradition. Society loves to pretend that queerness is a recent phenomenon, so I think there is great power in stories that explore the past in new ways.”
Check out the clip above.
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