debra-granik

Seven years after making waves with Winter’s Bone, director Debra Granik has finally found her next narrative feature. Following the documentary Stray Dog, she’ll be directing My Abandonment. Once set to star Casey Affleck, Hell or High Water star Ben Foster will now step into the lead role, alongside Thomasin McKenzie, according to THR. Scripted by the director and Anne Rosellini, based on Peter Rock‘s book, it follows the actors as father and daughter living in a temperate rainforest around Portland, Oregon. After a run-in with the authorities causes them to be displaced, they are on the search for a new home.

marjane satrapiEver since her pitch-perfect dark comedy The Voices a few years back, we’ve been waiting for Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi to announce her next project, and now the day has come. This fall she’ll be directing an adaptation of Lauren Redniss‘ graphic novel Radioactive, according to Deadline. The film will follow the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chemist Marie Curie and “her extraordinary scientific discoveries — through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre — and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.” Said to be “image-driven,” the live-action film is scripted by Jack Thorne, who recently scripted the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Next up, after crafting one of the most overlooked films of last year with Divines, Golden Globe-nominated director Houda Benyamina has revealed her next film. Titled For Assia, Variety reports it is an “an epic drama charting the romance between an Algerian revolutionary and an American reporter, set against the backdrop of Algeria’s struggle for independence.” Inspired by such female revolutionaries as Djamila Bouhired and Zohra Drif, the film — which spans over three decades — is aiming to begin production early next year with a “up-and-coming” American actor and an unknown actress for the leads.

Lastly, Laura Bispuri, director of Sworn Virgin (our positive review), has found her next project. Variety has announced that she’ll be helming the drama Daughter of Mine, which centers around a 9-year-old girl who discovers her real mother lives near her adoptive one and is torn between the two. Scripted by the director and Francesca Manieri, production will start this summer in Sardinia and casting has yet to be revealed for the “two A-list Italian actresses” set to play the warring mothers.

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