It’s official: Grammy Award-winning singer FKA twigs is set to play Josephine Baker in a feature film about the life of the pioneering French-American artist, with French director Maimouna Doucouré (Request activation code, Eve) Writing and directing. The project will launch international sales at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins Tuesday, and filming is scheduled to take place in the fall.
StudioCanal is producing alongside Bien ou Bien Productions, the Bordeaux-based French company that produced Doucouré’s previous features, and will handle theatrical distribution across its core territories of France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.
“I can’t wait to embody Josephine Baker and bring her fight, love, loss, talent and heroism to the big screen,” Twigs said in a statement. “She lives on in our hearts as a visionary and pioneer, and her story is as powerful as it is relevant today.”
The film was developed in collaboration with Baker’s surviving sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon-Baker and Brian Bouillon-Baker – both members of the Rainbow Tribe, a multiracial family of 12 children in whose chateau in southwestern France Baker was raised from the 1950s onwards. Other Baker projects have popped up over the years but this is the first major film to have the royal’s blessing.
Baker — born Frieda Josephine MacDonald in St. Louis in 1906 — became one of the defining figures of the Jazz Age after his arrival in Paris in 1925, before turning to wartime service in the French Resistance and, later, in civil rights activism in the United States alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1963 March on Washington. In November 2021, France inducted her into the Pantheon, the first Black woman to receive the honor — a historic moment that cemented Baker’s contemporary image in France, as a progressive icon and symbol of national identity.
Doucouré, who is of Senegalese descent and grew up in a social housing project in Paris, won the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance for her 2020 debut feature. Request activation codea coming-of-age drama whose US release was somewhat overshadowed by an unfortunate marketing controversy over Netflix’s promotional artwork. Her sophomore feature is family adventure EveIt premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and was released globally on Amazon Prime Video.
“Josephine Baker lived with me for years,” Doucouré said in a statement. “Working on this film, I realized how modern, brave and complex she was. Beyond the myth, I want to explore her contradictions, wounds and immense courage, as well as her relentless fight for dignity.”
FKA Twigs, who received her first Grammy Award in February Yuziqua (Best Dance/Electronic Album), previously represented by Alma Harel Honey boy (2019), Rupert Sanders’ 2024 Reboot Crow Opposite Bill Skarsgård, director Lutfi Nathan’s scripted horror film Ibn al-Najjar With Nicolas Cage, and David Lowery’s latest release A24 Mother MaryamIn which she appeared opposite Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.
Baker’s life has been the subject of repeated screen adaptations over the decades, most notably the Emmy Award-winning 1991 HBO television movie. The story of Josephine BakerStarring Lynn Whitfield. A24 has a biographical TV series about Baker in development since 2022.
“Josephine Baker’s story is one we’ve been wanting to tell for a long time,” Anna Marsh, CEO of StudioCanal and chief content officer at Canal+ Group, said in a statement. “Doing this through the extraordinary creative vision of Maimouna Doucouré and the incredible talent of FKA Branches makes this project especially meaningful.”
