The film 'My Oxford Year' premieres on August 1, 2025 on Netflix. The story was written by Julia Whelan who spent the 2006-2007 academic year as a study abroad student at Lincoln College from Middlebury College. The book and film follow the love story of Anna, a graduate student from America, and Jamie, a town local, which alters the track of both of their lives. Whelan will also be hosting a screening of the film on Grove Quad on September 14, 2025 for the Lincoln community who can book here.
When asked about the process of writing the original book the film is based on, Whelan says, "This book has a unique origin story. It began life as an existing screenplay by Allison Burnett that an Oxford friend (Medeni Griffiths, also a screenwriter) and I were hired to work on by the studio. The theory was that we could help with the authenticity and accuracy of the setting, but we ended up doing quite a bit of original work on it. During that process, the producers grew to know my opinions about the story and its characters and how passionate I had become about its potential. But trying to cram everything I had to say about love and grief and poetry and dreams into the limited real estate of a screenplay was impossible, and the producers asked if I thought it would make a good novel. I jumped at the opportunity to write my full vision for the story in prose, changing some of the original story in the reverse adaptation process."
Photos from Julia Whelan's time as a student at Lincoln College in 2006-2007.
We were also curious if any parts of the book/film are based on real-life stories from her time at Lincoln. However, Whelan adds that "While nothing in the book's plot is autobiographical, it is suffused with my love and affection for Oxford and I wrote it in a kind of fever dream of nostalgia, filling it with my favorite places and sensory memories. (I also wrote Lincoln into the book because I couldn't abide Magdalen getting all the attention.) The author's note at the end of the book goes into this process more fully and also covers my time at Lincoln."
The writing of the initial story was a labor of love for Whelan. The book was published in 2018 and 7 years later the film is finally premiering. "It's truly a study in how stories get told in different mediums, the strengths and limitations of each, and the collaborative process of art," writes Whelan.