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Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor are joining director Vicky Wight’s next film.
Deadline reports that the Happiness for Beginners writer/director is working on her next film, The Body Is Water, and has cast Whitlock and Ellis-Taylor alongside Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn, Eva Birthistle, Allen Leech, Fionnula Flanagan, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Bronagh Gallagher.
What to know about ‘The Body of Water’ and its plot
The film is described as “a cross-cultural story about loss, healing, and the strangers who refuse to let you disappear.” Set in West Cork, Ireland, the film “follows a grieving man who vanishes to a remote Irish village, only to find that disappearing is the one thing the town–and Lou, an eccentric young woman with a curious dog–won’t let him do.”
Wight will produce with Geoff Linville, Sydney Augusta Huynh and Red Ted Media’s John Norton. Stephen Hall, Dark Day Pictures’ Mike Jones and Coert Voorhees executive produce.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Vicky Wright have worked together before
Wight has worked with Ellis-Taylor before in the 2013 drama The Volunteer, in which Ellis-Taylor starred with Ebon Moss-Bachrach. In a similar vein to The Body is Water regarding a person trying to find themselves again, Ellis-Taylor’s role in The Volunteer is as a woman who leaves a job that pays her well, but kills her spirit.
After spending time not caring about life, she decides to clock back into the world by volunteering at a soup kitchen. In fact, finding yourself is a throughline in many of Wight’s projects; Happiness is for Beginners also follows a woman, played by Ellie Kemper, who gets signed up for a wilderness course by her brother in order to rediscover herself after a divorce.
