Cannes: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rob Morgan Board Prison Drama ‘Frank & Louis’

Kingsley Ben-Adir (Bob Marley: One Love, Barbie) and Rob Morgan (Mudbound, Don’t Look Up) have signed on to star in Frank & Louis (working title), the upcoming English-language debut from Swiss-Italian director Petra Volpe, whose recent feature Late Shift drew acclaim at this year’s Berlinale and became a local box office success in German-speaking Europe.

Volpe first drew international attention with her 2017 feature The Divine Order, which was Switzerland’s official Oscar entry.

TrustNordisk has acquired world sales rights to Frank & Louis, which began principal photography on April 30, and will pitch it to buyers at the Cannes film market next week.

Set within the walls of a U.S. prison, Frank & Louis follows Frank (Ben-Adir), a man serving a life sentence who takes on a caretaking role for aging inmates suffering from memory loss. The BAFTA-nominated British actor has drawn attention from recent turns as Bob Marley in Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love and Malcolm X in Regina King’s One Night in Miami. Morgan, known for The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Bull, stars as Louis, a fellow inmate living with memory decline.

What begins as a calculated attempt to improve his parole prospects evolves into a deeply personal connection with another prisoner, reframing the protagonist’s understanding of dignity, responsibility, and redemption.

The ensemble also includes Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses), and Grammy-winning artist René Pérez Joglar, a.k.a. Residente, who recently earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his performance in In the Summers.

Frank & Louis was co-written by Volpe and Esther Bernstorff (4 Kings), and produced by Reto Schaerli and Lukas Hobi for Zodiac Pictures, with Georgie Paget and Thembisa Cochrane of Caspian Films serving as co-producers. It is supported by Swiss public broadcaster SRF and SRG SSR, along with backing from national and regional film funds.

Ben-Adir is represented by CAA, The B-Side (U.K.), and Range Media Partners. Morgan is repped by Elysian Heights and Fox Rothschild. Volpe is represented by Cora Olson of Range Media Partners in the US and Beate Wolgast of Die Agenten in Germany. Pérez Joglar is represented by CAA, Varma is represented by 42 in the UK and Principal Entertainment in the US, and Eleazar is represented by The Artists Partnership in the UK and Principal Entertainment in the U.S.