Zola stars Taylour Paige and Riley Keough and is based on a wild true story about two strippers on a seedy road trip to Florida.
Zola (Taylour Paige) meets the carefree Stefani (Riley Keough) and they embark on a chaotic stripper road trip to Florida, where they encounter several shady characters and have to deal with the rising tension in their fickle friendship.
The film is based on a viral Twitter thread by Aziah ‘Zola’ King in 2015, which saw her tweet a story about a seedy road trip to Florida with her new stripper friend, a story full of highs and lows and dodgy characters.
The thread caught the eye of many celebrities, and Rolling Stone published a story about it not long after.
It makes sense that there is now a movie adaptation, though it’s the first of its kind to my knowledge, and the film looks as erratic as Aziah’s story in tweet form.
The film is directed by Janicza Bravo, whose only other directing credit includes the indie comedy Lemon (2017).
Film lead Taylour Paige is likewise a relative newcomer, recently starring in the critically acclaimed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020).
Co-lead Riley Keough has had a few notable performances to date, most recently in Netflix’s The Devil All the Time (2020), Earthquake Bird (2019), and Steven Soderbergh’s quirky crime caper, Logan Lucky (2017).
Zola looks like a perfect anecdote to fast living in a modern social media subculture, showing the dangers that come with it in an entertaining fashion.
See it in select Australian cinemas from 23 September 2021.
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