Elle Fanning in First Trailer for Haifaa Al-Mansour's 'Mary Shelley' Film

"I no longer see the world and its works as they before appear to me, and men appear to me as monsters." IFC Films has debuted an official trailer for Haifaa Al-Mansour's film Mary Shelley, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, and played at the Torino, Dubai, and Tribeca Film Festivals. This film tells the story of famed author Mary Shelley, showing her as "a fiercely modern 19th-century woman, and her Frankenstein as the product of unbridled imagination and profound grief." Elle Fanning stars as the Mary Shelley, with a knockout ensemble cast including Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, Maisie Williams, Joanne Froggatt, Stephen Dillane, Ben Hardy, Tom Sturridge, and Ciara Charteris. This looks like a very intense, extra-dramatic account of the events of Shelley's life. But also like an engaging watching.

Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Haifaa Al-Mansour's Mary Shelley, direct from YouTube:

Daughter of political philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who died giving birth to her, Mary (Fanning) is a bookish adolescent of humble means when she meets Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth), who, though only 21, is already a celebrated young poet — and a shameless womanizer with one collapsing marriage already under his belt. Defying her beloved but disapproving father, Mary absconds with Shelley — her stepsister, Claire, in tow. Mary seeks "unconventional approaches to living," and finds it in spades with her debt-ridden bon vivant scribe, who desires neither monogamy nor the constraints of fatherly responsibility. Yet Percy believes in Mary, and two years into their union he whisks her away to a Swiss chateau for a summer of debauchery presided over by Lord Byron, where Mary will confront personal demons and compose the most influential horror novel of all time. Mary Shelley is directed by Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour, of the film Wadjda previously, and the short doc Women Without Shadows. The screenplay is written by Emma Jensen, and Haifaa Al-Mansour. This first premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. IFC will open Mary Shelley in select theaters starting on May 25th.