The Town and The Gift star Rebecca Hall is set to make her directorial debut with Passing, an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, which has Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarok) and Ruth Negga (Preacher) attached to star.
Deadline reports that Passing will follow “the unexpected reunion of two high school friends, Clare Kendry (Negga) and Irene Redfield (Thompson), whose renewed acquaintance ignites a mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully constructed realities.”
“Nella Larsen’s Passing is an astonishing book about two women struggling not just with what it meant to be black in America in 1929, but with gender conventions, the performance of femininity, the institution of marriage, the responsibilities of motherhood, and the ways in which all of those forces intersect,” said Hall. “I came across the novel at a time when I was trying to reckon creatively with some of my personal family history, and the mystery surrounding my bi-racial grandfather on my American mother’s side. In part, making this film is an exploration of that history, to which I’ve never really had access.”
“Rebecca Hall is a brilliant artist who I’ve had the pleasure of working with and I’ve loved the Nella Larson novella, Passing since I first read it many years ago,” added executive producer Angela Robinson. When Rebecca told me about her family history and her passion to tell this story, I immediately signed on to help bring her vision of this incredible book to the screen.”
Hall and Robinson recently collaborated on the William Moulton Marston biographical drama Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which was written and directed by Robinson and saw Hall starring alongside Luke Evans and Bella Heathcote.
