Take a first look at Xavier Dolan’s first Eng­lish-lan­guage film

Her­ald­ed as the ​“young-adult prodi­gy of world cin­e­ma”, Xavier Dolan has direct­ed six fea­ture films to date, the first of which he made when he was just 19. The 28-year-old French-Cana­di­an direc­tor behind Mom­my, Lau­rence Any­ways and Tom at the Farm is cur­rent­ly work­ing on The Death and Life of John F Dono­van, his first Eng­lish-lan­guage feature.

With film­ing hav­ing now wrapped, Col­lid­er has released some tan­ta­lis­ing first-look images, a selec­tion of which you can check out below.

A con­tem­po­rary tale set a decade after the death of tit­u­lar char­ac­ter John Dono­van (Kit Har­ing­ton), the film will address the com­plex­i­ties of the moth­er-son dynam­ic. ​“When edit­ing, it became clear that the heart of this film would be the moth­er-son rela­tion­ships,” Dolan told Col­lid­er. ​“And, you know, that real­i­sa­tion didn’t both­er me. I could spend the rest of my life talk­ing about moth­ers and sons and still be mak­ing a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent movie than the last.”

Har­ing­ton plays an Amer­i­can super­nat­ur­al teen dra­ma star forced to hide his sex­u­al­i­ty for the ben­e­fit of his career. Jes­si­ca Chas­tain is the vil­lain of the piece (a gos­sip colum­nist), while Natal­ie Port­man plays a failed actress reluc­tant for her son to fol­low in her footsteps.

Dolan has sug­gest­ed that the film will simul­ta­ne­ous­ly address issues that social media are bring­ing to the fore, say­ing: ​“social media facil­i­tates hatred, vio­lence, racism, homo­pho­bia, xeno­pho­bia and all of that. That is, in my opin­ion, what it tru­ly facil­i­tates. It’s becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to express your­self with­out risk­ing offend­ing peo­ple, for your choic­es, your behav­iours to be mis­tak­en and misinterpreted.”

The impres­sive cast also fea­tures the likes of Thandie New­ton, Bel­la Thorne, Susan Saran­don, Kathy Bates, Jacob Trem­blay, Michael Gam­bon and Sarah Gadon. After the dis­ap­point­ment of Dolan’s last fea­ture, It’s Only the End of the World, we can’t wait to see what the tal­ent­ed young writer/​director has got in store for us this time around.

Are you as excit­ed about Dolan’s first Eng­lish lan­guage film as we are? Tweet us @LWLies