Isabel and her 2 Goyas!- for Best Director & Best Adapted Screenplay

Special Gala Premiere

International Hit: $12.8m B.O. worldwide

WINNER 3 Goyas [Spanish Oscars- the film is a Spain-UK co-production] Best Picture, Best Director & Best Screenplay.

WINNER Best international literary adaptation Frankfurt Book Fair 2017. Past winners include Tom Ford (NOCTURNAL ANIMALS) and Todd Haynes (CAROL).

PITCH

A town that lacks a bookshop isn’t always a town that wants one.

LOGLINE

England 1959. In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

CAST

Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins Returns, The Sense of an Ending, The Philosophy of Phil, The Party, Spectral, Shutter Island)
Bill Nighy (The Limehouse Golem, Their Finest, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, About Time)
Patricia Clarkson (Delirium, The Party, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Learning to Drive)

SYNOPSIS

Based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel of the same name; ‘The Bookshop’ is set in 1959, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a free spirited widow, puts grief behind her and risks everything to open up a bookshop – the first such shop in the sleepy seaside town of Hardborough, England. Fighting damp, cold and considerable local apathy she struggles to establish herself but soon her fortunes change for the better. By exposing the narrow minded local townsfolk to the best literature of the day including Nabokov’s scandalising “Lolita” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, she opens their eyes thereby causing a cultural awakening in a town which has not changed for centuries.

Her activities bring her a kindred spirit and ally in the figure of Mr Brundish (Bill Nighy)who is himself sick of the town’s stale atmosphere. But this mini social revolution soon brings her fierce enemies: she invites the hostility of the town’s less prosperous shopkeepers and also crosses Mrs. Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), Hardborough’s vengeful, embittered alpha female who is herself a wannabe doyenne of the local arts scene. When Florence refuses to bend to Gamart’s will, they begin a struggle not just for the bookshop but for the very heart and soul of the town. 

FILMMAKERS

Written and directed by: Isabel Coixet (Learning to Drive, Elegy, My Life Without Me)
Based on Booker Prize winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Bookshop’,
itself Booker-nominated.

Produced by Jaume Banacolocha, Joan Bas, Adolfo Blanco and Chris Curling.
Production Companies: Diagonal TV, A Contracorriente Films, Zephyr Films.
Co-produced with Green Films and One Two Films
With the support and participation of ICAA, ICEC, TVE, Movistar+, Natixis Coficine and
Northern Ireland Screen.

Running Time: 113mins