The highly anticipated film “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s popular novel, sheds light on the issue of domestic violence.

The film is about a florist named Lily, played by Blake Lively, who pursues her dream of opening her own business. Co-star and director Justin Baldoni plays Ryle, a neurosurgeon who seems like a nice guy but becomes abusive. Baldoni didn’t plan on casting himself in the film, but it was an email from Hoover that encouraged him to accept the role of Ryle.

“I was looking for films that could be commercial and speak to human experiences,” he said. “I had never read a romance novel before. By the end of the book, I couldn’t even read the text on the page because I was crying so much.”

Baldoni said Hoover’s novel – which sold six million copies – was inspired by her mother, who had similar real-life experiences as a victim of domestic violence.

“She was Lily Bloom and I thought, if this can affect me like this, I can only imagine what it can mean for women and people around the world who are in this situation,” he said. “We are all in a situation or a pattern that we need to break the cycle of.”

He hopes the film will help bring about change. Too often, Baldoni says, people ask, “Why did she stay?” when it comes to a woman in an abusive relationship, whether in real life or in a book or movie.

“We have to ask ourselves why men hurt others. That was the most important thing for me, and I learned more and more that there is real love at play in these women who experience this every day. There is charm. There is charisma. There is passion. There is this belief that they can be better, and it’s not that simple.”

He worked with an organization called No More, which works to end domestic and sexual violence, with the goal of creating an honest picture of women’s experiences.

Baldoni hopes “It Ends With Us,” which premiered Tuesday, will help create a safer world through compassion and empathy. He said he wants men to watch the romantic film and take responsibility for their lives after watching it.

“I want men to go to the theater and see a version of themselves in some ways. There are two very different characters. In Atlas and Ryle, both have experienced trauma in the past,” he said. “One deals with it very differently than the other, and my other hope is that the men who haven’t worked on it, who haven’t worked on healing, when they see parts of themselves in Ryle, they get a chance to step back and say, ‘You know what, I don’t want to blow up my life. I don’t want to hurt the person I love the most.'”