Fresh from the success of Hamnet, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are set to reunite for a project which tells an “impossible love story”. With their previous venture garnering acclaim, could it be similar this time around?
As per Deadline, the duo have joined the cast for Hold On to Your Angels, the new film from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Benh Zeitlin. The project is being shopped for buyers at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which gets underway on Tuesday (12 May).
Per the logline, the Louisiana-set film “follows a hell-bound outlaw (Mescal) and a ferocious shepherd of lost souls (Buckley), who fall in catastrophic love as their crumbling bayou paradise drags them under”.
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Zeitlin is best known for Beasts of the Southern Wild, which received four Oscar nominations – including Best Picture and Best Director – in 2013. In addition to directing Hold On to Your Angels, he will also pen the screenplay.
The upcoming film is being produced by Plan B Entertainment and Alex Coco, with production set to begin in South Louisiana in February 2027. Given that the project is only in early development, a release date hasn’t yet been confirmed.
“Hold On to Your Angels is the most impossible love story I’ve ever witnessed — an outlaw romance for the end of America, set on the crumbling edge of South Louisiana,” said Zeitlin in a statement.
“I’ve been dreaming of telling it since its hero, Pam Harper, walked into an audition for Beasts of the Southern Wild 17 years ago. It’s a love letter to an endangered way of life — and a rallying cry for empathy across a fractured planet.”
“Benh absolutely stunned us and the world at large with the cosmic sorcery of Beasts of the Southern Wild. With Hold On to Your Angels, Benh has set his powerful mix of intense realism, myth and magic against the large scale of an epic love story,” added Plan B.
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The film marks a reunion for Buckley and Mescal following Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name. The period drama follows Agnes and William Shakespeare as they reel from the death of their young son.
For her performance as Agnes, Buckley won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 98th Academy Awards in March, while the film also received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.
Hold On to Your Angels has no release date.
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Reporter, Digital Spy George is a freelance writer who specialises in Movies and TV. After graduating with a degree in Film Studies and Journalism from De Montfort University, in which he analysed the early works of Richard Linklater for his dissertation, he wrote for several websites for GRV Media. His film tastes vary from blockbusters like Mission: Impossible and John Wick to international directors such as Paolo Sorrentino and Hirokazu Kore-eda, and has attended both the London and Berlin film festivals.
