Buckley, Mescal to Reunite in Zeitlin's Hold on to Your Angels

Academy Award-winning actress Jessie Buckley and Oscar nominee Paul Mescal are set to reunite on screen in "Hold on to Your Angels," an outlaw romance written and directed by Benh Zeitlin, with production scheduled to begin in February.

The film, set on the crumbling edge of South Louisiana, stars Mescal as a hellbound outlaw and Buckley as a ferocious shepherd of lost souls. The two characters fall into catastrophic love as their bayou paradise collapses around them. Zeitlin, whose 2012 debut "Beasts of the Southern Wild" earned four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, described the project in a statement as "the most impossible love story I've ever witnessed, an outlaw romance for the end of America."

"I've been dreaming of telling it since its hero, Pam Harper, who played Little Jo, walked into an audition for 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' seventeen years ago," Zeitlin added. "It's a love letter to an endangered way of life and a rallying cry for empathy across a fractured planet."

Plan B Entertainment, the production company of Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner, is producing alongside Alex Coco of Rapt Film, known for his work on Sean Baker's...