Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio has achieved a lot of great things in the last few years, ever since his career took off with the 2013 film “Gloria.” For one, A24 asked him to remake that film as “Gloria Bell” in 2018, starring Julianne Moore. Then the year before that, he released two movies in one year, 2017’s “Disobedience” and “A Fantastic Woman,” the latter winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, making it the first Chilean film to win that honor.
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Hollywood has already obviously caught on to him, and his latest film, “The Wonder,” stars one of the actresses of the moment right now, Florence Pugh, who just came off some drama with Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling.” With all that seemingly behind her, Pugh is apparently ready to move on now, and Lelio’s latest is pretty ambitious. It’s an 1800s-period piece set in Ireland, centering on a devout religious community. The film is a tale of two strangers who transform each other’s lives, a psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil. Alongside Pugh is newcomer Kíla Lord Cassidy.
The film also stars Tom Burke, Niamh Algar, Elaine Cassidy, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Dermot Crowley, Brían F. O’Byrne, and David Wilmot. Here’s the official synopsis:
1862,13 years after the Great Famine. An English Nightingale Nurse Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) is called to the Irish Midlands by a devout community to conduct a 15-day examination over one of their own. Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy) is an 11-year-old girl who claims not to have eaten for four months, surviving miraculously on “manna from heaven.” As Anna’s health rapidly deteriorates, Lib is determined to unearth the truth, challenging the faith of a community that would prefer to stay believing.
Written by Emma Donoghue, Sebastián Lelio, and Alice Birch, “The Wonder” made its debut at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at the Toronto International Film Festival. “The Wonder” will play in select theaters o November 2, 2022, and then premiers on Netflix on November 16, 2022. Ahead of its Headline Gala premiere at the upcoming London Film Festival, watch the first trailer below.