Morrissey biopic England Is Mine gets trailer

New Morrissey biopic England Is Mine will make its world premiere in three days' time as the closing gala of Edinburgh International Film Festival, but before then we have a glimpse of what to expect from the film’s first trailer, which arrived online this morning.

“The local music scene is the soul preserve of troglodytes whose regard for subtlety and variation is comparable to a pig’s passion for the slaughterhouse. In case I haven’t made it very clear, it wasn’t very good.” That’s good ol’ Steven Patrick Morrissey there speaking in voiceover in England Is Mine's tralier. Even before he started the greatest band of the 80s, the Mancunian singer-songwriter was clearly full of himself.

The title of England Is Mine is taken from Smiths' song Still Ill, and takes audiences to 1970s Manchester where a young Morrissey is frustrated with his working-class existence and the local music scene. The future Smiths frontman is played by rising Scottish talent Jack Lowden, who’ll soon to be seen in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Here’s the film’s logline: “With dreams of a successful music career being dampened by his run-of-the-mill job at the local tax office, Steven finds solace in Manchester’s underground gig scene where he meets Linder Sterling [played by Jessica Brown Findlay], an intelligent, self-assured artist – who encourages him to make his ideas of superstardom a reality.”

In the trailer we see young Morrissey do a lot of moaning to his best pal Linder about how rubbish the bands in the Manchester scene are. “If you spent as much time looking for a band as you do slagging them off, it could be you up there,” someone says to him in a bar. And that’s exactly what he does.

Take a look at the trailer in the player above.