Netflix just dropped the trailer for its latest feature film To The Bone that highlights the eating disorder anorexia and stars Lily Collins alongside Keanu Reeves and Alex Sharp. Collins plays 20-year-old Ellen who is anorexic and fights to be better at a treatment center run by a doctor, played by Reeves.
To The Bone is writer/director’s Marti Noxon’s feature film debut and was inspired by Noxon’s personal adolescent experiences with bulimia and anorexia.
Though the project is evidently important to Noxon, it almost didn’t come to pass. She explains, “It seemed like male producers didn’t understand…I was told a number of times that it was just too small a topic. I was, like, ‘What? Really?’ Half the movies that get made are about some really talented white guy who understands jazz, you know? So many of the indie movies that get made are not about topics that touch millions and millions of people.”
28-year-old Collins, too, has suffered from eating disorders, and in preparation for the film, she was supervised to lose weight for the role, although she was afraid to return to that headspace.
In an interview with Refinery29, she says about receiving the script for To The Bone as she finished a chapter in her book – Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me – regarding her eating disorder, “it was like the universe literally throwing it in my face saying, this is something you need to address either for yourself or for other young people going through it out there.”
To The Bone debuts on Netflix this July 14.
