Troian Bellisario has written her first feature film, titled Feed, in which she also stars alongside Tom Felton. The Pretty Little Liars star, who’s also a producer on the film, wrote the movie based on her own experience with anorexia.
She wanted to tell a story about the long-lasting effects of mental illness and how the scars of that struggle never really go away. “It was not easy; it was like engaging with an addiction,” says the starlet. “One of the things I really wanted the film to explore was that once you have this relationship, once you have this mental illness or this disease, it never really goes away.”
Together, Bellisario and Felton play Olivia and Matthew Grey, 18-year-old twins born into a world of privilege and high expectations. But as they prepare for their last year of school and the many opportunities that await them, a tragedy splits them apart, leaving one twin to learn to live without their other half — or perhaps, test how far they’ll go to bring their sibling back.
On the surface, Feed doesn’t seem to have anything to do with mental illness or with eating disorders, but Troian hints that the plot of Feed is much more complicated than it seems, however. The story, much like eating disorders, are more about control and power than about the actual hunger for food.
Feed premieres in theaters on July 18.
