Wildcat movie storyline. Directed and co-written by four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, WILDCAT invites the audience to weave in and out of celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing?
In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.
Wildcat is an American biographical drama film about American novelist Flannery O’Connor struggling to publish her first novel. Also based on O’Connor’s short stories, the film was directed by Ethan Hawke and written by Hawke and Shelby Gaines. It stars Maya Hawke, Rafael Casal, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn, and Laura Linney.
Wildcat’s world premiere was held at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2023. It was also shown at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2023. In January 2024, Oscilloscope acquired US distribution rights to the film. It was released in New York and Los Angeles on May 3, 2024, with wide release to follow.
About the Film
Ethan Hawke explores the life and art of American author Flannery O’Connor — played by his own daughter, Maya Hawke — in his latest interrogation of the artist’s way.
There’s always something intriguing rustling around in the projects Ethan Hawke chooses to direct, as anyone who saw his documentary Seymour: An Introduction (TIFF ’14) can attest. After Blaze and his recent documentary series about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Hawke’s latest exploration of the artist’s way focusses on a key period in the life of Flannery O’Connor, imagining the young writer as she perfects her process, committing to her unique and deeply personal fiction at the cost of her own comfort and contentment.
The O’Connor story allows Hawke to play with both text and texture, using the device of having his protagonist insert her own family into her fiction in a movie where he’s cast his daughter Maya Hawke as that protagonist. And, of course, he’s made a movie about a writer’s process that spends little time on the actual labour of writing, because he knows the end result is the thing that matters. The thing that lasts.
Maya Hawke finds something similarly compelling in O’Connor’s skin, wrestling with the author’s bred-in-the-bone Catholicism and her enigmatic decision to abandon earthly temptations to embrace an ascetic life. The film feels like Ethan Hawke’s response to making Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, with its tormented protagonist struggling to understand God’s purpose. He even casts his co-star Philip Ettinger in a small but pivotal role here, alongside Laura Linney, Steve Zahn, Alessandro Nivola, and Cooper Hoffman. The result is an ambitious, aching inquiry into creation and sustenance from one of America’s most consistently enthralling talents.
Wildcat (2024)
Directed by: Ethan Hawke
Starring: Maya Hawke, Laura Linney, Philip Ettinger, Rafael Casal, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alessandro Nivola, Christine Dye, Willa Fitzgerald, Erin Eva Butcher
Screenplay by: Shelby Gaines, Ethan Hawke
Production Design by: Sarah Young
Cinematography by: Steve Cosens
Film Editing by: Barry Poltermann
Costume Design by: Amy Andrews
Set Decoration by: Rebecca Steele
Art Direction by: Stephen Manka
Music by: Latham Gaines, Shelby Gaines
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Oscilloscope
Release Date: May 3, 2024
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