Tilda Swinton and Director David Lowery Team Up for Whodunnit Thriller DEATH IN HER HANDS
Tilda Swinton and director David Lowery are joining forces for a new film that sounds eerie, cerebral, and totally unclassifiable.
The movie is titled Death in Her Hands, and it’s based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2020 novel. It’s the latest project from See-Saw Films, the same outfit behind The Power of the Dog and The King’s Speech, and it tells a very unique whodunnit story.
Swinton plays Vesta Gul, “a woman striving to take control of her own story” and she comes across a chilling handwritten note in the woods near her home: “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.”
“Except there is no body. No blood. Unmoored by the death of her husband and armed only with a camera, her dog Charlie, and her vivid imagination, Vesta becomes obsessed with uncovering Magda’s identity and fate.
“As her inner world begins to eclipse reality, the mystery of Magda threatens Vesta’s grip on her own life – until, in a spellbinding operatic climax, we realize that Magda’s death may finally allow Vesta to live.”
David Lowery, best known for genre-bending films like The Green Knight, A Ghost Story, and The Old Man & the Gun, is writing and directing. He said in a statement:
“I am a devoted fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, and the opportunity to translate Death In Her Hands to the big screen has been, in some ways, a subterfuge for getting to spend a great deal of time obsessing over her prose. But now the ruse is up!
“The script begot by the novel will soon become a film, and I am suddenly aware more than ever that adapting this particular work represents a devious challenge (anyone who’s read the novel will understand why)!
“But I’m ready for it, and am emboldened to have such wonderful collaborators at my side: the whole team at See-Saw, Jeanie, and of course, the incredible Tilda Swinton, who I know will illuminate Ottessa’s story in ways I could only dream of.”
Swinton, as usual, feels like the perfect choice. She’s an actor who thrives on complexity, and knows how to walk that fine line between grounded human emotion and uncanny surrealism.
Producers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman shared: “David Lowery is a master of crafting striking, atmospheric stories, and there’s no one better to bring Ottessa Moshfegh’s haunting and brilliant novel to the screen. We can’t wait for audiences to step into the world he creates and be swept away by Vesta’s story, played by the incomparable, magnetic, and endlessly compelling Tilda Swinton.”
Production is backed by See-Saw Films with Jeanie Igoe also producing, and Simon Gillis and Ann Phillips serving as executive producers.
Swinton will next appear opposite Colin Farrell in Edward Berger’s The Ballad of a Small Player. Meanwhile, Lowery continues his streak of projects that resist simple genre labels, instead offering something far weirder, richer, and more haunting.