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It\u2019s official: Grammy-winning singer FKA twigs is set to star as Josephine Baker in a feature biopic<\/a> of the American-French entertainer\u2019s trailblazing life, with French filmmaker Ma\u00efmouna Doucour\u00e9 (Cuties<\/em>, Hawa<\/em>) writing and directing. The project will launch international sales at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, which kicks off Tuesday, with shooting scheduled for the fall.<\/p>\n StudioCanal is producing alongside Bien ou Bien Productions, the Bordeaux-based French outfit that produced Doucour\u00e9\u2019s prior features, and will handle theatrical distribution across its core territories of France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI cannot wait to embody Josephine Baker, bringing her fight, her love, her losses, her talent and her heroism to the big screen,\u201d twigs said in a statement. \u201cShe lives on in our hearts as a visionary, ground-breaking woman whose story is as powerful as it is relevant today.\u201d<\/p>\n The film has been developed with the cooperation of Baker\u2019s surviving sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker \u2014 both members of the Rainbow Tribe, the multi-ethnic family of 12 children Baker raised at her ch\u00e2teau 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\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n Baker \u2014 born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis in 1906 \u2014 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 Panth\u00e9on, the first Black woman to receive the honor \u2014 a landmark moment that elevated Baker\u2019s contemporary profile in France, both as a progressive icon and a symbol of national identity.<\/p>\n Doucour\u00e9, 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<\/em>, a coming-of-age drama whose release was somewhat overshadowed in the U.S. by an unfortunate marketing controversy over Netflix\u2019s promotional artwork. Her sophomore feature, the family adventure Hawa<\/em>, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and was released globally on Amazon Prime Video.<\/p>\n \u201cJosephine Baker has lived with me for years,\u201d Doucour\u00e9 said in a statement. \u201cWorking 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.\u201d<\/p>\n FKA twigs, who took home her first Grammy in February for Eusexua<\/em> (Best Dance\/Electronic Album), previously acted in Alma Har\u2019el\u2019s Honey Boy<\/em> (2019), Rupert Sanders\u2019 2024 reboot of The Crow<\/em> opposite Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd, Lotfy Nathan\u2019s biblical horror The Carpenter\u2019s Son<\/em> with Nicolas Cage, and David Lowery\u2019s recent A24 release Mother Mary<\/em>, in which she appeared opposite Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.<\/p>\n Baker\u2019s life has been the subject of repeated screen attempts over the decades, most prominently HBO\u2019s Emmy-winning 1991 telefilm The Josephine Baker Story<\/em>, starring Lynn Whitfield. A24 has had a Baker biographical TV series in development since 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cJosephine Baker\u2019s story is one we have long aspired to tell,\u201d said Anna Marsh<\/a>, CEO of StudioCanal<\/a> and chief content officer of parent Canal+ Group, in a statement. \u201cTo do so with the exceptional creative vision of Ma\u00efmouna Doucour\u00e9 and the remarkable talent of FKA twigs makes this project especially meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s official: Grammy-winning singer FKA twigs is set to star as Josephine Baker in a feature biopic of the American-French entertainer\u2019s trailblazing life, with French filmmaker Ma\u00efmouna Doucour\u00e9 (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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2411306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[471669,326557,471668,356970,401504,471667,74251],"class_list":["post-2411305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bien-productions","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-doucoure","tag-fka-twigs","tag-josephine-baker","tag-maimouna-doucoure","tag-studiocanal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FKA-twigs-to-Star-in-Josephine-Baker-Biopic-From-StudioCanal.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2411307,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411305\/revisions\/2411307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2411306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}