Tessa Thompson is making her next move, and it is a literary one rooted in grief, mystery, and the quiet devastation of a marriage falling apart.
The actress has signed on to produce and star in a film adaptation of A Separation, the acclaimed 2017 novel by Katie Kitamura. The project will be written and directed by Jonas Carpignano, the Italian American filmmaker celebrated for his Cannes-recognized southern Italy trilogy. The announcement marks one of the more compelling pairings in recent independent cinema development.
What the story is about
Published by Riverhead Books, A Separation follows a woman who travels reluctantly from London to a remote peninsula in southern Greece after her estranged husband goes missing. What unfolds is less a conventional thriller and more a meditation on intimacy, identity, and the ambiguous grief that comes with the slow dissolution of a marriage. The novel earned widespread critical praise for its precise, unsettling prose and its willingness to sit with emotional complexity rather than resolve it neatly.
Carpignano, whose trilogy spanning Mediterranea, A Ciambra, and A Chiara earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest voices in contemporary world cinema, brings an ideal sensibility to the material. His work has long examined lives lived on the margins with patience and humanity, and his eye for place and atmosphere makes the Greek peninsula setting feel like a natural extension of his cinematic language. A Chiara premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2021 before reaching American audiences through Neon.
The team behind the film
Joining Thompson as producers are Riva Marker of Linden Productions, Kishori Rajan of Viva Maude, Greta Caruso, and Christos V. Konstantakopoulos of Faliro House. David Levine of Anonymous Content will serve as executive producer.
The project brings together several relationships already tested in production. Thompson and Linden previously collaborated on Is God Is, an adaptation of Aleshea Harris’ award-winning stage play, set for release on May 15 through Orion Pictures. Linden and Faliro House also share history through their work on Stereophonic, David Adjmi’s play that became the most nominated production in Tony Awards history and took home five awards including Best Play in 2024.
Faliro House carries significant weight in the arthouse world, having co-produced more than 90 films including Academy Award-nominated titles Before Midnight, The Lobster, and The Lost Daughter. Anonymous Content’s recent credits include the Oscar-nominated Nickel Boys and upcoming projects such as Netflix’s East of Eden starring Florence Pugh.
Thompson’s rising producing profile
This latest project adds to an already ambitious slate for Thompson and Viva Maude. The company recently produced His and Hers, a Netflix murder mystery starring Thompson opposite Jon Bernthal, based on the Alice Feeney novel. Under a first-look deal with Amazon MGM, Viva Maude also backed Hedda, Nia DaCosta’s reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic stage play Hedda Gabler, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and earned Thompson a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama. Other projects in the pipeline include an adaptation of Raven Leilani’s debut novel Luster.
Kitamura, meanwhile, has been having a remarkable run of her own. Her most recent novel Audition was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is separately being adapted by filmmaker Lulu Wang.
With Thompson’s growing instinct for bold literary material and Carpignano’s gift for grounded, emotionally precise storytelling, A Separation arrives with the kind of quiet momentum that tends to build into something worth watching.
