Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal have been confirmed to reunite in Hold On to Your Angels, Benh Zeitlin’s new Louisiana-set film. The movie is being shopped at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, with production scheduled to start in South Louisiana in February 2027.
For Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, the road from Hamnet to their next shared project is already taking shape — and it comes with a promise as intense as it is strange.
They’ve now been confirmed to reunite in Hold On to Your Angels. the new film from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Benh Zeitlin. The project is being shopped for buyers at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which gets underway on Tuesday (12 May). In the meantime. the story at the center of it all has been described in uncompromising terms: Louisiana as a place on the edge. and love as something that cannot stay gentle.
The logline says the film follows “a hell-bound outlaw” played by Mescal and “a ferocious shepherd of lost souls” played by Buckley, who fall into catastrophic love as their crumbling bayou paradise drags them under.
Zeitlin, in a statement about the film, leaned into the contradiction at the heart of the premise. “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. ” he said. He added that he has been “dreaming of telling it” since his film’s hero. Pam Harper. walked into an audition for Beasts of the Southern Wild 17 years ago. “It’s a love letter to an endangered way of life — and a rallying cry for empathy across a fractured planet. ” Zeitlin continued.
The project is built on a track record that already made waves. Zeitlin is best known for Beasts of the Southern Wild. which received four Oscar nominations — including Best Picture and Best Director — in 2013. Hold On to Your Angels continues that creative involvement: as well as directing, he will also pen the screenplay.
Plan B Entertainment and Alex Coco are producing the film, and production is set to begin in South Louisiana in February 2027. Because the project is still in early development, no release date has been confirmed.
Buckley and Mescal’s reunion matters more because it follows their last on-screen collaboration in Hamnet. Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name. That period drama centered on Agnes and William Shakespeare as they reel from the death of their young son. Buckley’s performance as Agnes earned her the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 98th Academy Awards in March. The film also received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.
With Hold On to Your Angels still searching for its buyers at Cannes and no release date announced yet, the only certainty right now is the shape of what’s coming next: a new Louisiana-set love story, framed by myth and danger, led again by the chemistry of Buckley and Mescal.
Plan B Entertainment also responded to the announcement, praising Zeitlin’s blend of worlds. “Benh 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. ” Plan B said.
Hold On to Your Angels has no release date.
Jessie Buckley Paul Mescal Hold On to Your Angels Benh Zeitlin Cannes Film Festival Hamnet Beasts of the Southern Wild Plan B Entertainment Alex Coco South Louisiana Louisiana-set film