A Leonora Carrington Biopic Traces the Surrealist Icon’s Life and Work

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous to blur the distinction between abstraction and reality?” asks actress Olivia Vinall in her role as the Surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). The heady line is one of the standout statements in the new biopic documenting Carrington’s life and work.

Directed by Thor Klein and Lena Vurma and produced by Modern Films, Leonora in the Morning Light opens in 1930s Paris, when the artist was enmeshed in an avant-garde community that included luminaries like Salvador Dalí and André Breton, along with her partner Max Ernst. When World War II begins, Carrington flees to Spain before eventually re-settling in Mexico, perhaps the location most associated with her work.

The film is based on the biographical novel by Elena Poniatowska and comes at a time when Carrington’s oeuvre is in the spotlight, particularly the fantastical work made while she was confined to a psychiatric hospital in Spain which had been lost for 80 years.

Modern Films is also behind the documentary about pioneering artist Hilma af Klint, along with Boom For Real, which chronicles Jean-Michel Basquiat’s teenage years. Leonora in the Morning Light is slated for release on May 29 in the U.K. and Ireland.

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