THE WONDER

WORLD

US, UK, Ireland 2022, 102 min, Director: Sebastián Lelio

Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman, MVFF40) directs this gripping adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s (Room, MVFF38) revisionist historical novel set in her native Ireland. It’s been a decade since the Great Famine when a million died from starvation and a million more fled the country. Now, a “fasting girl” in Ireland’s countryside has stopped eating, claiming to subsist solely on “manna from above.” The town’s leaders summon an English nurse (Florence Pugh) to help sit a two-week vigil, watching for proof of saintliness or fraudulence, the child’s well-being be damned. Then, beset by her own demons, the nurse’s fate becomes tied to that of the girl. Accompanied by an eerie soundtrack with the power to beckon ghosts, and shot by Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog, MVFF44) in a stunning series of Rembrandt-lit rooms and cloud-eclipsed landscapes, The Wonder summons the medieval, when condemnation and beatification threatened the same earthly outcome. —Shari Kizirian

IN PERSON: writer-director Sebastián Lelio

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