The film: Ammonite
Ammonite is a dive into the life of a woman whom history wanted to silence — but whose passion still resonates.
Ammonite (2020), directed by Francis Lee, tells the life of Mary Anning, famous self-taught paleontologist of the 19th century, played by Kate Winslet.
The film traces her daily life in Lyme Regis, at the edge of the cliffs where she searches for fossils, and her unlikely encounter with Charlotte Murchison (played by Saoirse Ronan).
Through their eyes, the film shows solitude, passion and the place of women in science and society.
In Ammonite, the sea, the stone and the silence reveal forgotten lives, sculpted by time.
Far from the spectacular, the film chooses accuracy and sensuality, to tell the life of a woman erased by history but animated by an immense force, free, curious and determined, seeking to understand the world as much as to find her place in a universe that does not recognize her.
The film perfectly illustrates the Matilda Effect: this historical injustice where women's discoveries are forgotten or attributed to men.
Through the intimate gaze of Ammonite, we finally give Mary Anning the visibility she never had during her lifetime.
The work then becomes more than a film: an artistic rehabilitation and a tribute to all the erased women of science.