The Wonder director Sebastián Lelio and star Florence Pugh joined Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles awards-season event to talk about their Netflix film and the power and fanaticism of faith.
The film is a psychological period drama that follows an English nurse’s immaculate investigation in the Irish countryside. Set in 1862 Ireland, Lib Wright (Pugh) is brought to a small religious village to investigate the validity of a young girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy) who has claimed to have survived without eating for months by the grace of God.
Tom Burke, Ciarán Hinds and Elaine Cassidy also star. RELATED: The Contenders Film: Los Angeles – Deadline’s Full Coverage Pugh explained how she interpreted the challenge of embodying a stringent female nurse who aims to dismantle the religious beliefs in a patriarchal town. “For me, before anything, it was really important to figure out who [Nurse Wright] was.” Pugh said. “Lib is a Nightingale nurse, and during that time, Nightingale nurses were seen as the purest people.
They were almost higher than being a woman during that era. Women were narrow, they didn’t belong to anything. They belonged to their husband and they were sold with property.
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