The Bookshop

The Bookshop is a 2017 drama film written and directed by Isabel Coixet, based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald, in which the lead character attempts against opposition to open a bookshop in the coastal town of Hardborough, Suffolk (a thinly-disguised version of Southwold). Shooting took place in Portaferry and Strangford, County Down, Northern Ireland and in Barcelona during August and September 2016. The film stars Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and Bill Nighy. It won three Goya Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Plot Set in the late 1950s, the film opens with an explanatory voice-over narration. Florence Green, a widow, has decided to open a bookshop in the small coastal town of Hardborough, Suffolk, acquiring as her premises the Old House, a damp and abandoned property that has been standing empty for many years. After refurbishing it and moving in, she learns that Violet Gamart, an influential and ambitious local resident, had privately earmarked the Old House for her own pet project, a local arts centrea project that she has no intention of dropping even though the property is no longer empty. Aided by several of the townspeople Mrs Gamart attempts to get Florence evicted, and the shop closed.