It’s official: Grammy-winning singer FKA twigs is set to star as Josephine Baker in a feature biopic of the American-French entertainer’s trailblazing life, with French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré (Cuties, Hawa) writing and directing. The project will launch international sales at the Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off Tuesday, with shooting scheduled for the fall.
StudioCanal is producing alongside Bien ou Bien Productions, the Bordeaux-based French outfit that produced Doucouré’s prior features, and will handle theatrical distribution across its core territories of France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.
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“I cannot wait to embody Josephine Baker, bringing her fight, her love, her losses, her talent and her heroism to the big screen,” twigs said in a statement. “She lives on in our hearts as a visionary, ground-breaking woman whose story is as powerful as it is relevant today.”
The film has been developed with the cooperation of Baker’s surviving sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker — both members of the Rainbow Tribe, the multi-ethnic family of 12 children Baker raised at her château in southwest France from the 1950s onward. Other Baker projects have surfaced over the years but this is the first major film to have the estate’s blessing.
Baker — born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis in 1906 — became one of the defining figures of the Jazz Age after arriving in Paris in 1925, before pivoting to wartime service in the French Resistance and, later, U.S. civil rights activism alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. In November 2021, France inducted her into the Panthéon, the first Black woman to receive the honor — a landmark moment that elevated Baker’s contemporary profile in France, both as a progressive icon and a symbol of national identity.
Doucouré, who is of Senegalese descent and was raised in a Paris social housing project, won the world cinema dramatic directing prize at Sundance for her 2020 feature debut Cuties, a coming-of-age drama whose release was somewhat overshadowed in the U.S. by an unfortunate marketing controversy over Netflix’s promotional artwork. Her sophomore feature, the family adventure Hawa, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and was released globally on Amazon Prime Video.
“Josephine Baker has lived with me for years,” Doucouré said in a statement. “Working on this film, I realise how modern, fearless and complex she was. Beyond the legend, I want to explore her contradictions, her wounds and her immense courage, as well as her relentless fight for dignity.”
FKA twigs, who took home her first Grammy in February for Eusexua (Best Dance/Electronic Album), previously acted in Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy (2019), Rupert Sanders’ 2024 reboot of The Crow opposite Bill Skarsgård, Lotfy Nathan’s biblical horror The Carpenter’s Son with Nicolas Cage, and David Lowery’s recent A24 release Mother Mary, in which she appeared opposite Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.
Baker’s life has been the subject of repeated screen attempts over the decades, most prominently HBO’s Emmy-winning 1991 telefilm The Josephine Baker Story, starring Lynn Whitfield. A24 has had a Baker biographical TV series in development since 2022.
“Josephine Baker’s story is one we have long aspired to tell,” said Anna Marsh, CEO of StudioCanal and chief content officer of parent Canal+ Group, in a statement. “To do so with the exceptional creative vision of Maïmouna Doucouré and the remarkable talent of FKA twigs makes this project especially meaningful.”
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