Oscar winner Jessie Buckley and Oscar nominee Paul Mescal came out of Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” as one of last year’s most bruising screen pairings, and they’re not waiting long to test that chemistry in stranger waters. The two are set to star in “Hold On To Your Angels,” a new outlaw romance written and directed by Oscar-nominated “Beasts Of The Southern Wild” filmmaker Benh Zeitlin.
For Zeitlin, the project marks both a return to South Louisiana terrain and his first feature since 2020’s “Wendy.” His debut “Beasts Of The Southern Wild” arrived in 2012 as one of the great Sundance fairy-tale detonations of the decade, eventually earning four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. “Wendy” followed eight years later, but “Hold On To Your Angels” sounds closer to Zeitlin’s elemental bayou mythology: fragile worlds, weather-beaten communities, and people trying to survive as the ground gives way beneath them.
Set on the edge of South Louisiana, the film follows a hell-bound outlaw, played by Mescal, and a ferocious shepherd of lost souls, played by Buckley, who fall in catastrophic love as their crumbling bayou paradise drags them under. It’s a lot of Zeitlin in one sentence, but the casting makes sense. Buckley has a gift for making grief feel visceral without curdling into misery porn while Mescal’s best work often lives between the registerss of self-destruction and tenderness.
“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,” Zeitlin said 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’ seventeen years ago. It’s a love letter to an endangered way of life—and a rallying cry for empathy across a fractured planet.”
The film is being produced by Plan B and Alex Coco under his Rapt Film banner, with CAA Media Finance launching the project for the Cannes market. Production is expected to begin in February.
After years away from the center of the indie-film conversation, “Hold On To Your Angels” puts Zeitlin back on terrain that appears close to his original creative language, only now with two of the most in-demand actors of their generation at the center.
No distributor or release date has been announced yet, but with a Cannes market launch ahead and a February shoot penciled in, “Hold On To Your Angels” is already one of the more intriguing auteur packages heading into the marketplace.
