Fanny Hawthorne

Fanny Hawthorne is a sharp, unsentimental portrait of a Lancashire mill worker who decides that a week of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of social approval. During the traditional 'Wakes Week'—a rare period where the factory fires are extinguished and the workers descend upon Blackpool—Fanny engages in a brief, passionate affair with Alan Jeffcote, the son of her wealthy employer. When the secret inevitably leaks back to their soot-stained hometown of Hindle, the machinery of Edwardian morality grinds into motion. Parents and patriarchs demand a marriage to 'save' Fanny’s reputation, but they fail to account for one thing: Fanny does not feel she needs saving. The film strips away the romanticism of the era to reveal a woman who views her own body and time as her own property, challenging the very foundations of class and gender expectations in the 1920s.