Sixteen-year-old Mary spends her days reading ghost stories and daydreaming on the grave of her mother, the eminent writer and women’s rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft. When she meets 21-year-old poet and infamous womanizer Percy Shelley at a party, her father - famous anarchist philosopher William Godwin - responds disapprovingly to his daughter’s interest in the married poet. Mary and Percy elope, bringing with them Mary’s half-sister Claire. Their wild spiral of partying, poverty and unbridled passion leads them the Swiss villa of the eccentric Lord Byron, where Mary confronts her demons and conceives the story of Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley is a sumptuous biography of the writer's fiery relationship, the passion of which she poured into one of the most enduring gothic novels of all time: Frankenstein. Led by Saudi director Haifa Al-Mansour (Wadjda), the film is a timeless coming-of-age tale of a young woman who defies conventions to find her own way in the world.
“A film about ideas that breaks out of the well-worn mold of period drama /…/ by reaching deeply into the mind of the extraordinary woman who wrote the Gothic evergreen.”
- The Hollywood Reporter.