Two people have had a major impact on the life and career of Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abel). The first was her grandmother Cynthia (Leslie Manville), a quirky, soulful and original woman who passed on to her her animalistic nature, her love of jazz, her desire to always go her own way and not compromise on it. The other person was her boyfriend, Blake (Jack O'Connell), and life with him was like a ride on a very frantic roller coaster, during which Amy picked up a few unpleasant addictions. Ironically, at the most difficult time in her life, when she lost both of those mainstays (her grandmother died of lung cancer and she and Blake broke up), she made her seminal album Back to Black, which is one of the best albums yet made in 21st century music. It made Amy a superstar, reunited her with Blake, but the worldwide attention she was getting didn't stand a chance with this perhaps too fragile girl, though she tried and almost succeeded. "I wanted to film Amy's story from her point of view. The only truth about her life is in her songs. So I decided to tell the story in her words, in her lyrics. In them, she confesses her love, her pain, her disappointments. They are full of deep emotion and quite often harsh humour," says director Sam Taylor-Johnson. The album Back To Black has won five Grammy Awards, sold over 16 million copies and its essential songs, including Rehab, Love is a Losing Game and the title track Back To Black, will be heard in the film.


She was a revelation and one of the greatest singing talents of the 21st century. In this film about her meteoric rise to fame and her own destruction, you'll experience the short but all the more intense story of Amy Winehouse's life.