Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley reunite in Cannes buyer push
Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley are set to reunite in Hold On to Your Angels, the new film from Benh Zeitlin, as the project heads to buyers at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The Louisiana-set love story has no release date yet, but it already arrives with two performers who have just come off awards-level visibility.
Benh Zeitlin says the film 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.” The screenplay will follow a hell-bound outlaw played by Mescal and a ferocious shepherd of lost souls played by Buckley as their love turns catastrophic in a collapsing bayou world.
Cannes and South Louisiana
The 79th Cannes Film Festival gets underway on Tuesday 12 May, and that is where Hold On to Your Angels is being shopped for buyers. That makes the project an early-stage sales title rather than a finished package, with Plan B Entertainment and Alex Coco attached as producers and production set to begin in South Louisiana in February 2027.
Set that way, the film is being positioned before cameras roll, not after. For buyers, the immediate draw is the pairing of Mescal and Buckley with Zeitlin, who will write and direct the film, while the long lead to production leaves the financing and distribution picture open.
From Hamnet to Angels
The reunion follows Buckley and Mescal’s work together on Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. Buckley won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 98th Academy Awards in March for playing Agnes, and the film also received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.
Zhao’s film gave the pair a shared prestige-screen history before this new project, and that matters in a market where buyers often respond first to recognizable creative combinations. Zeitlin is leaning into that logic too, saying he has been dreaming of the story since “its hero, Pam Harper, walked into an audition for Beasts of the Southern Wild 17 years ago.”
Benh Zeitlin's pitch
Plan B said, “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,” a pitch that makes clear how the film is being sold: as a director-led event piece with awards pedigree in the cast.
For industry watchers, the practical takeaway is simple: this is the kind of package that can travel at Cannes even without a release date. If buyers bite, the next real milestone is not publicity but financing momentum, because a February 2027 start in South Louisiana means the film is still in the long runway phase.
