Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s film Beanpole (review here) was a big winner at Cannes, putting him on the radar of cinephiles. Now Balagov is aiming a bit higher. Variety reports he’ll make his English-language debut with Butterfly Jam, a film that will star Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough, two names that are sure to attract a lot of attention.
The film is written and directed by Balagov, centering on “a tight-knit U.S. community of Circassian immigrants and a complicated relationship between a father and son, in which the son imbues his father with qualities he doesn’t actually possess.”
There’s heavyweight muscle behind Butterfly Jam with Pascal Caucheteux’s Why Not Productions, the team behind Emilia Perez and its 13 Academy Award nominations.
Balagov has taken a swing at Hollywood before, as he was the first to be hired to direct HBO’s pilot episode of The Last of Us. Ultimately, that didn’t work out and co-creator Craig Mazin took over, with roughly 40% of what Balagov shot making it into the final cut.
Keoghan is an Oscar nominee for The Banshees of Inisherin, and has been keeping busy lately with Saltburn, Bird, and Bring Them Down which is in theaters now. Keough was last seen, under a ton of fur, in Sasquatch Sunset and in the Hulu miniseries Under the Bridge.
