BFI lines up Lynn + Lucy for July release
David Farnor | On 09, Jun 2020
The BFI has acquired the rights to distribute Lynn + Lucy, with a release for the British drama planned this July.
The award-winning debut feature from writer/director Fyzal Boulifa is a fable-like story revealing the impact of escalating hysteria within a community. It tells a story about life in contemporary Britain, following Lynn and Lucy, two lifelong best friends. Neither has ventured far from the working-class community they grew up in. Lynn, who married her first boyfriend and whose daughter is fast growing up, is delighted when the charismatic, volatile Lucy has her first baby, a boy. Lucy, however, does not react to motherhood as Lynn expects. Soon, they find their friendship tested in the most extreme circumstances.
The film stars newcomer Roxanne Scrimshaw, street-cast for the role of Lynn, her first ever screen appearance, and, as Lucy, Nichola Burley, who was first seen in Dominic Savage’s Love and Hate (for which she was also street-cast) and has since appeared in numerous film and TV productions including Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights.
Boulifa is a British writer-director whose short films The Curse (2012) and Rate Me (2015) both won the Illy Prize for Best Short Film at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The Curse was BAFTA-nominated and both films were screened at the Sundance Film Festival among others. Boulifa and Scrimshaw were each nominated in the respective Best Newcomer categories at the 2019 BIFA Awards.
Lynn + Lucy premiered last year at San Sebastian International Film Festival, with a UK premiere at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. Now, the BFI has snapped up the rights and will premiere the film on BFI Player’s subscription service on 2nd July.
A BFI Player subscription costs £4.99 a month, with a 14-day free trial.