WHO’S IN IT?
Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Matthias Schoenaerts (Far From The Madding Crowd), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), Amber Heard (Magic Mike XXL), Sebastian Koch (Bridge of Spies), Emerald Fennell (Anna Karenina), Adrian Schiller (Bright Star)
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), director, producer; Lucinda Coxon (Wild Target), writer; Tim Bevan (Love Actually), Eric Fellner (Les Miserables), Anne Harrison (Two Family House) and Gail Mutrux (Kinsey), producers; Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel), composer; Danny Cohen (The Program), cinematographer; Melanie Oliver (The Damned United), editor
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
In 1920s Copenhagen, illustrator and artist Gerda Wegener (Vikander) asks her husband Einar Wegener (Redmayne) to stand in for a female model in one of her new paintings. Its success leads to Gerda using her husband as a model in several further paintings as a woman, leading to Einar developing a fondness for the female appearance and, eventually, living life as a woman named Lili Elbe. Gerda’s marriage to Einar/Lili becomes strained as a result, but she would eventually support her partner’s decision to undergo the then-unpractised sex reassignment surgery to fully realise Lili’s dreams…
IN ONE SENTENCE, WHY SHOULD YOU BE EXCITED?
Fresh from winning an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne goes under another form of physical transformation – this time to become Lili Elbe, one of the pioneer figures in transgender history whose life story has rarely been examined until now.
