Keeping up its buying spree, Amazon Studios has acquired Kristen Stewart’s independent political thriller “Against All Enemies.”
The deal was closed Friday at the Berlin Film Festival with UTA Independent Film Group negotiating with Amazon on behalf of the filmmaking team and financiers. Amazon Studios was the most active buyer at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival, closing deals for “Late Night,” “The Report,” “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” “Honey Boy,” and “One Child Nation.”
Jack O’Connell, Anthony Mackie, Margaret Qualley, and Colm Meaney are also starring in “Against All Enemies.” Benedict Andrews directed from a script by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse. Stewart stars as actress Jean Seberg, and the story centers on attempts by the FBI to discredit Seberg through its Cointelpro program in retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party. Those efforts included creating a false story in 1970 that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband, but by a member of the Black Panther Party.
Mackie portrays a civil rights activist and O’Connell plays an FBI agent assigned to surveil the actress. Seberg acted in dozens of films including “Saint Joan,” “Bonjour Tristesse,” “Breathless,” and “The Mouse That Roared.” She died in 1979 in France, with authorities ruling her death a suicide.
“Against All Enemies” producers are “La La Land’s” Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones of Automatik, Kate Garwood and Stephen Hopkins. Memento Films International is handling international sales.
Stewart is the only American actress ever to win a César Award, winning for Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria.”