Watch a teaser for A24's Zola, a thriller born from a Twitter thread
Can a really great tweetstorm be as gripping onscreen as it is online? That’s one of the many questions posited by Zola, a new thriller that emerged as one of the buzziest films to debut at this year’s Sundance. Directed by Janicza Bravo (Lemon), the film brings to life a 148-tweet thread about a doomed trip to Florida with the help of Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, and Succession’s Nicholas Braun. Today, A24 dropped the movie’s first official teaser.
“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out?” begins the clip, echoing the tweet that spawned this whole endeavor. “Most of what follows is true,” it goes on to tease, teasing that Bravo plans to engage with the questionable veracity of a story that first unfolded in a flurry of bite-sized chunks. That story follows the title character (Paige) as she finds herself in search of exotic dancing opportunities with a stranger (Keough), only to find herself mixed up with her new friend’s boyfriend (Braun) and pimp (Domingo).
“One of the big conversation pieces of the festival, Zola has already been mentioned in the same breath as Hustlers and Spring Breakers,” reads our Sundance dispatch. “But the arch vibe is closer to a funky-discursive post-Tarantino joint, just with more smart-phone-inspired stylistic tics…and a general debauchery that’s presented both salaciously and with a certain detached unease courtesy of Mica Levi’s latest sci-fi score.”
Zola doesn’t have a release date just yet, but the teaser offers the tantalizing promise that it’s “coming soon.” Stay tuned to your feed for updates, not that you were going to stop scrolling anytime soon.