The trailer for the Oscar-tipped drama Boy Erased has given a first look at the fact-based tale of gay conversion therapy.
It’s actor-director Joel Edgerton’s follow-up to his film-making debut, domestic thriller The Gift, and stars Lucas Hedges as the son of a Baptist pastor who is sent away to a therapy program aimed at “curing” him of his homosexuality.
It’s based on a memoir of the same name by Garrard Conley, published in 2016 to critical acclaim. Hedges received an Oscar nomination for his breakout performance in Manchester by the Sea and has since appeared in Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
His onscreen parents in the film are played by Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman.
“The way in which she and her husband feel about putting [Jared] into conversion therapy, I wanted that to come from a place of a mother thinking it’s the right thing to do,” Kidman said to Entertainment Weekly. “Nothing that she did was vindictive, which is probably why they have such a strong relationship now.”
Edgerton, most recently seen opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow, also appears in front of the camera as the head of the program.
“I’m obsessed with cults and prisons, and I felt like I was going to get this glimpse into a world I’d heard about,” Edgerton said of the film earlier this year. “You leave Garrard’s story feeling like the true conversion that is at the heart of the movie is the conversion of his ideas.”
It’s the second film this year to tackle the issue of gay conversion therapy, following on from Appropriate Behaviour director Desiree Akhavan’s comedy drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the Grand Jury prize at January’s Sundance film festival.
Boy Erased is released in US cinemas on 2 November and is expected to premiere at the fall festival circuit, with an Oscar campaign likely to follow.
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