Academy Award winner Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) and Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun), the stars of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, are reuniting in Hold On To Your Angels, written and to be directed by Oscar nominated filmmaker Benh Zeitlin (Beasts Of The Southern Wild).

Plan B (Moonlight) will produce with Alex Coco (Anora) under his Rapt Film banner.  The Veterans is handling international sales, with domestic distribution rights represented by CAA Media Finance. 

The hot project will be introduced to buyers at this month’s Cannes Marché. Production is set to begin in February.

Set on the edge of South Louisiana, Hold On To Your Angels “follows a hell-bound outlaw (Mescal) and a ferocious shepherd of lost souls (Buckley) who fall in catastrophic love as their crumbling bayou paradise drags them under.”

“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. 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”, said Zeitlin.’

“Benh Zeitlin absolutely stunned us and the world at large with the cosmic sorcery of Beasts Of The Southern Wild. With Hold On To Your Angels, Benh has set his powerful mix of intense realism, myth, and magic against the large scale of an epic love story. This is a writer/director with a vision for the ages and we could not be more proud to be by his side to make this film with Jessie and Paul,” added Plan B.

“After years of working with filmmakers that explore the overlooked corners of our world, I can recognize Benh Zeitlin as a filmmaker with that rare gift: the ability to reveal profound beauty and humanity in parts of America that seldom find their way onto the silver screen,” commented Coco.

Buckley is represented by CAA, United Agents, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Mescal by CAA and Curtis Brown Group; Zeitlin by CAA and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Feldman, Rogal, Shikora & Clark.