A highlight at Toronto International Film Festival earlier this fall, Stephen Williams’ Chevalier gives the stage to rising star Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Cyrano, Luce, It Comes at Night). Focusing on the life composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the story follows the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, who rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) herself and her court. Ahead of an April release from Searchlight, the first trailer has now arrived.
Jared Mobarak said in his review, “TIFF wasn’t kidding when they said they were welcoming director Stephen Williams back after pivoting into prestige television. It’s been 27 years since his theatrical debut Soul Survivor, with a laundry list of all your favorite shows in the meantime. Which just goes to prove that sometimes it’s all about the right project bringing you back into the fold. And it seems a script by rising star Stefani Robinson (coming from FX shows Atlanta and What We Do in the Shadows herself) about the first-known classical composer of African ancestry, Joseph Bologne (also known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges), was exactly that. A stirring tribute to a man of many talents, Chevalier gorgeously gives a once-forgotten virtuoso violinist the cinematic treatment.
See the trailer below.
Chevalier opens on April 7, 2023.