The notorious life of superstar Lord Byron, a restless poet whose determination to free and find himself in a changing world finds him freeing those oppressed by the same forces.

An original biopic of Lord Byron, the highly controversial and complicated poet, the self-professed first celebrity, and very much the original antiheroic rock star. A gritty, unapologetic drama, dark in tone and sinister in mood, exploring Byron's notorious personality, unrivaled genius, paradoxical contrasts, contradictions, highs, lows, pendulum swings between ego peaks, and reversals of fortune, as well as his complex relationships, at once with his own suffocating global fame, ravenous fan base, and intimacies with men and women. No prior knowledge of the life, work, or legacy of Byron is necessary to appreciate the cinematic experience and true story.—Jono Borden

Born for opposition, destined to infamy, and built for tragedy, an only child raised in abject poverty by a single mother in rented rooms above a perfume shop after his profligate father ran off with her inheritance then killed himself abroad before he even started school, Byron walked with a limp and a chip on his shoulder, toeing the proverbial line between dignity and disaster, speaking with a mixed Scotch-English accent, inheriting unexpectedly at aged 10, from a notorious great-uncle, the barony that made him a lord. With it came the crumbling ruins of his ancestral mansion, a pile of multi-generational debts, and an abundance of privilege, nonetheless. His was an age at the edge of collapse, when revolutions and romance hand-in-hand abandoned reason for feeling, leading tradition to its death. Killing fields dotted countrysides, boundaries realigned, kings lost their heads, common individuals made themselves immortal examples of progress, industrialism created a middle class, a mass market, an entertainment industry, celebrity, and the weekend which, until then, didn't even yet exist as we know it ever since, while machinery replaced technique, challenging craftsmanship, engendering ubiquity, technology at once weakening and empowering meanings and ways of being. As well, increasing communication. Printing presses, publishing houses, and an international postal network inked the blueprint for our Internet, linking continents and blurring cultures. Letters anticipated blogging and were shared like social media posts, traded among friends, carefully kept, copied, and readable today. Every private conversation between correspondents penned to be an open secret. Byron's writings were available in 45 languages in his own lifetime, in approved and pirated editions, and read on every continent through colonial expansion. He had fan mail, stalkers, merchandise, sat for more portraits than royalty yielding globally recognized images reproduced in massive quantity, toured, and bore for the world his lucrative brand of tortured soul that came to bear his name as an adjective: Byronic.—Jono Borden