A LOCALLY-FILMED movie is set to show Chesil Beach on the big screen in all its majestic glory.

The stunning 17 mile Dorset beach, which stretches from Portland to West Bay, will be the star of upcoming Hollywood film On Chesil Beach.

It features as a wild and windblown backdrop to a story of the unexpressed misunderstandings and fears of a young couple.

This film version of Ian McEwan's novel will be released in UK cinemas on June 15.

It stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle. Ronan previously starred in an adaptation of McEwan's novel Atonement and her role as Briony Tallis aged 12 earned her first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress at the 2008 ceremony. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 2016 Oscars for her turn in Brooklyn, in which she played an Irish immigrant struggling between her life back home and her new experience in New York.

Just last week Ronan was hailed Ireland's own Meryl Streep, winning the Golden Globe Best Actress award for Lady Bird.

Howle appeared in the wartime blockbuster Dunkirk, another movie part-filmed in Dorset, with scenes shot in Weymouth harbour and on Swanage Railway.

Ian McEwan has adapted the screenplay from his best-selling novel of the same name, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize. The film, a BBC Films presentation, recently received its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival following its international launch at Toronto International Film Festival.

It is the story of Florence (Ronan) and Edward (Howle), young university graduates getting married in 1962. She is a talented and ambitious classical musician from a well-to-do family and he is a clever young man from humbler origins.

It is summer 1962, and England is still a year away from huge social changes: Beatlemania, the sexual revolution and the Swinging Sixties. Florence and Edward are just married and honeymooning on the dramatic coastline of Chesil Beach in Dorset.

However, the hotel is old fashioned and stifling, and underlying tensions between the young couple surface and cast unexpected shadows over their long anticipated wedding night.

The film’s supporting cast features Anne-Marie Duff (Suffragette), Adrian Scarborough (Vera Drake), Emily Watson (Testament of Youth) and Samuel West (Darkest Hour).

The film was shot on location at Chesil Beach in October and November 2016.

A crew was seen shooting scenes on a particularly sunny day at Chesil Beach, close to Bagwell Farm Touring Park. Indoor scenes were filmed at Pinewood Studios. Other scenes have been shot at Merton Street in Oxford and Mansfield College, Oxford.

Ian McEwan famously came under fire after admitting that during research for On Chesil Beach he helped himself to some pebbles and took them home to adorn his mantlepiece.

The beach is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and covered by bylaws that mean a hefty fine for anyone removing even a single stone. The author ended up returning the stones.

Critics have already given On Chesil Beach rave reviews after it premiered on the opening day of the Toronto Film Festival.

Hollywood trade magazine Variety has compared the film to David Lean’s 1945 Brief Encounter in its elevation of 'two painfully civilized and polite British lovers into an image of the purest romantic ardour'.

Variety writes: "But it also has a quality all its own, a vision of love that’s shockingly old-fashioned and tinglingly audacious. It should succeed in connecting with audiences eager to experience that all-too-rare thing: a romantic drama that gets so far into the mystique of its era that it takes you somewhere you’ve never been."

Howle is considered by Variety to be 'a fiercely charismatic and commanding talent.'

On Chesil Beach is directed by Dominic Cooke, a 51-year-old theatre veteran. This is his first film.

It's produced by the team behind the Cate Blanchett-starring Carol; Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley.

Variety says: "Working from McEwan’s screenplay, Cooke has fashioned the material into a visually captivating romantic puzzle that reverberates with hope and tenderness and wistful loss."

Variety considers Cooke's film to be the most impressive debut of a director since Tom Ford made A Single Man.

The film jumps around in time, showing us who the couple are and how they met, and, Variety says, that’s when we start to fall in love with them as a couple. It is described as 'a happy movie with a teasing mystery to it' and 'asks us to toss away a crucial dimension of what we think we know about love, and to consider what love truly is'.

*Chesil Beach will be released in UK cinemas on June 15.