Heathcliff walks into modern Liverpool, and the Brontëverse will never recover.
Balls takes as its starting point Heathcliff, the foundling character central to Wuthering Heights, and explores links between the Foundling Hospital story and the much-loved novel by Brontë. Cole’s film is inspired by two separate but intertwined stories; the real lives of desperate women and the babies they gave up to the care of the Foundling Hospital, which are meticulously documented in the Hospital’s archives; and Heathcliff, the foundling antihero in Wuthering Heights. Set in modern day Liverpool, the film shines a light on how the lives of women, celebrated or unknown, were so circumscribed by society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and considers the extent to which progress has been made.
Direction
Lily Cole's debut bridges 18th century archives with grimy modern Liverpool.
Writing
Dialogue weaves Foundling Hospital records into contemporary narrative seamlessly.
Director
Lily Cole
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cole specifically requested access to the Foundling Hospital's 'billeted children' records, where mothers left tokens—coins, rings, fabric scraps—as identifiers they hoped to use for reunion, most of which never happened.
The film premiered at the Foundling Museum itself, with Cole noting she cast Sarah Gadon specifically because her ethereal quality evoked 1939 Merle Oberon while her Canadian neutrality avoided specific English class markers.
US
