Starring Daisy Ridley, cross-Channel swimming drama Young Woman And The Sea will be available to stream on Disney+ from 19th July.
Having enjoyed a brief yet welcome release in cinemas on the 31st May, director Joachim Rønning’s swimming biopic Young Woman And The Sea is to appear on Disney+ from the 19th July, it’s been announced.
Starring Daisy Ridley as Gertrude Ederle, the drama’s about the champion swimmer’s attempt to cross the English Channel in 1926, and the societal barriers – namely outright sexism – she had to cross before she could so much as put on a hat and goggles.
It’s an effervescent, superbly-acted little piece, with standout performances from Ridley as well as Christopher Eccleston as a conniving coach and Stephen Graham as veteran swimmer, Bill Burgess.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer struggled for almost a decade to get the film made, but the whole thing finally came together under the eye of Rønning in 2022, who shot much of the film in real stretches of briny sea – albeit with the Black Sea standing in for the English Channel.
Read more: Young Woman And The Sea review | Daisy Ridley excels in family-friendly biopic
“I didn’t want to do that in a heated tank or with blue screen,” the Norwegian filmmaker told us in May. “I warned Daisy Ridley when we were so lucky to get her to do this role: ‘This is gonna be a very physical role.’ And again, she was very motivated to tell this as true as we could. I learned later that Daisy’s actually scared of swimming in the open water and had to work to overcome that fear. Obviously she trained for months and months with Siobhan-Marie O’Connor, the British Olympic swimmer… I don’t think many people could have done what she did, actor or no actor, man or woman.”
The finished film was shown to test audiences in January, and the reaction was so enthusiastic that Disney opted to give it a cinema run (it was originally devised as a straight-to-streaming production).
If you missed it on that limited run, then it’s well worth catching up with Young Woman And The Sea on the smaller screen.
Read more: Young Woman And The Sea | Director Joachim Ronning on practical filmmaking, jellyfish and TRON: Ares
