First Look: Romantic Drama on Historic Conversion Therapy Scandal at Edinburgh

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. We can share a first-look clip from the movie.

Set in 1920s England, the film tells the story of a gay novelist and his psychiatric nurse who develop an unexpected friendship through a series of doctor-prescribed ‘dates’. During their conversations, the novelist recounts his tumultuous relationship with an old friend, which escalated when they turned to a risky procedure in an attempt to rid themselves of their forbidden feelings.

The film boasts an impressive cast, including Fionn O’Shea from Normal People, Robert Aramayo from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Erin Kellyman from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Louis Hofmann from Dark, and Jodi Balfour from Quarry. Producers on the project include Hannes Otto, Roelof Storm, Will Seefried, Naima Abed, and Emilie Georges, with Memento International handling the film’s distribution.

Director Will Seefried is best known for his short film Homesick (2022), which premiered at SXSW and won the Short of the Year Audience Award. Homesick was also a Vimeo Staff Pick and won Best Midnight Madness at the Oscar-qualifying Hollyshorts festival. Seefried co-founded Wolflight Films, a production company based in Los Angeles and Cape Town. He recently served as Executive Producer on two upcoming films for Amazon Prime Video and is currently developing several new projects, including a series and a feature film with Sue Naegle.

Seefried said his inspiration for Lilies Not For Me came from research into a “shocking procedure from the 1920s which claimed to ‘cure’ homosexuality.”

“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 shared.

“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.

Source: Deadline