FKA Twigs Will Play Josephine Baker in the Biopic She Deserves
FKA twigs has been confirmed to star as Josephine Baker in a feature biopic produced by StudioCanal, with French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré writing and directing. It is the first major Baker biopic to carry the full blessing of her surviving family. Shooting is scheduled for fall 2026, with the project launching international sales at the Cannes Film Festival.
What's Happening With the Josephine Baker Biopic
FKA twigs is playing Josephine Baker. That's the news — and it's a big one.
StudioCanal officially confirmed on May 11, 2026 that the Grammy-winning British artist will star in an untitled feature biopic chronicling the life of the American-born French entertainer, dancer, spy, and civil rights activist. Maïmouna Doucouré, the French filmmaker behind Cuties and Hawa, will write and direct. The project is being produced alongside Bien ou Bien Productions — the Bordeaux-based company behind Doucouré's previous features — and is launching international sales at Cannes this week. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in fall 2026. According to The Hollywood Reporter, this marks the first major Baker biopic to be made with the endorsement of Baker's surviving sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker, both members of the legendary Rainbow Tribe.
Why This Matters for Cinema and Streaming in 2026
The Josephine Baker biopic arrives at a moment when prestige biopics — particularly those centered on Black women who shaped global culture — are commanding serious attention from both theatrical audiences and streaming platforms.
Think about the trajectory: Respect (2021, Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin), Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022), Bob Marley: One Love (2024) — each of these demonstrated that music-icon biopics have a dependable, passionate global audience. Baker's story is arguably richer and more cinematically complex than any of them. She was a Jazz Age sensation in Paris, a French Resistance operative during World War II, and stood alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. That's three films worth of material in a single life.
The timing has additional cultural weight. In November 2021, France inducted Baker into the Panthéon — the country's highest secular honor — making her the first Black woman ever to receive it. That moment reignited global interest in her legacy, especially across Europe, where StudioCanal's theatrical distribution network spans France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia, and New Zealand.
For the streaming landscape, a StudioCanal production of this profile almost certainly has a major platform deal in its future. Doucouré's sophomore feature Hawa premiered at TIFF 2022 and landed on Amazon Prime Video globally. That precedent is worth noting. Prestige biopics with festival pedigree and international distribution muscle have become premium content for streaming platforms competing for awards-season relevance.
As Hot Press reported, FKA twigs had been in serious discussions about the role for some time before the official announcement — suggesting this wasn't a rushed casting decision but a considered, deliberate match between subject and performer.
Background: The Director, the Star, and a Long-Overdue Story
Maïmouna Doucouré is a precise and deliberate choice to tell this story.
Born of Senegalese descent and raised in a Paris social housing project, Doucouré brings a Franco-African perspective to a woman who straddled two worlds — Black America and white Europe — and refused to be diminished by either. Her debut feature, Cuties (2020), follows 11-year-old Amy as she joins a dance troupe at school and becomes caught between her traditional upbringing and the pull of a hypersexualized youth culture. The film won the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Prize at Sundance — a significant critical endorsement, even if its Netflix release was briefly overshadowed by a marketing controversy over promotional artwork that misrepresented the film's actual message. Hawa, her second feature, premiered at TIFF 2022 and showed a different register: warm, adventurous, family-oriented.
A Baker biopic demands both of those modes — the unflinching and the expansive. Doucouré has said as much. "Josephine Baker has lived with me for years," she stated. "Working on this film, I realise how modern, fearless and complex she was. Beyond the legend, I want to explore her contradictions, her wounds and her immense courage, as well as her relentless fight for dignity."
FKA twigs, for her part, is not a first-time actor taking a vanity role. She appeared in Alma Har'el's Honey Boy (2019), Rupert Sanders' 2024 reboot of The Crow opposite Bill Skarsgård, Lotfy Nathan's biblical horror The Carpenter's Son with Nicolas Cage, and David Lowery's A24 release Mother Mary alongside Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel. She also took home her first Grammy in February 2026 for Eusexua (Best Dance/Electronic Album). The physical discipline, the performance background, the cultural fluency — it's a logical fit, not a stunt.
Baker herself was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis in 1906. She arrived in Paris in 1925 and became one of the defining figures of the Jazz Age before her life took turns that most screenwriters would call implausible if they weren't documented fact.
You can see Doucouré discuss the project and tease the casting in this early interview on YouTube.
Watch the official trailer:
Where to Watch the Josephine Baker Biopic
The film has not yet been released — shooting begins fall 2026 — so no streaming availability exists at the time of writing. That said, we can map the likely landscape based on what we know.
Theatrical first. StudioCanal will handle theatrical distribution across its core territories: France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Poland, Australia, and New Zealand. A wide theatrical run is expected before any streaming window opens.
Streaming — the likely candidates:
- Amazon Prime Video is the most probable global streaming home, given that Doucouré's previous film Hawa landed there after its festival run.
- Netflix remains a possibility, particularly given the platform's appetite for prestige biopics and its existing relationships with StudioCanal.
- Apple TV+ has been aggressively acquiring awards-season contenders and cannot be ruled out.
- For Indian audiences, the film will likely appear on Prime Video India or Netflix India once a deal is confirmed.
- JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar are less probable given the film's European production profile, but theatrical distribution in India may follow if the film gains festival momentum.
We'll track streaming confirmations on movieott.com as they're announced — bookmark the Josephine Baker biopic page for updates.
What Viewers Should Know: Key Questions Answered
Who is playing Josephine Baker in the new biopic? FKA twigs, the British singer and actress who won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album in February 2026 for Eusexua, has been confirmed to star as Josephine Baker. It follows several acting roles in films including The Crow (2024) and A24's Mother Mary.
Who is directing the Josephine Baker biopic? French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré is writing and directing. She previously directed Cuties (2020), which won the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Prize at Sundance, and Hawa (2022), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Has this film been approved by Josephine Baker's family? Yes. This is explicitly the first major Baker biopic to receive the endorsement of her estate. Baker's surviving sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker — both members of the Rainbow Tribe, the multi-ethnic family of 12 children Baker raised at her château in southwest France — cooperated in the film's development.
When does filming start, and when will it be released? Principal photography is scheduled for fall 2026. No official release date has been confirmed. Based on typical post-production timelines, a late 2027 theatrical release is plausible, though a major film festival premiere in 2027 (Cannes, Venice, or TIFF) seems equally likely.
Have there been other Josephine Baker biopics? The most prominent prior adaptation was HBO's 1991 Emmy-winning telefilm The Josephine Baker Story, starring Lynn Whitfield. A24 has also had a Baker biographical TV series in development since 2022. Neither carried the family's endorsement.
Conclusion: A Story Whose Time Has Arrived
The Josephine Baker biopic has been decades in the making. Not just in development terms — but culturally. Baker's induction into the French Panthéon in 2021 felt like the world finally catching up to a woman it had always underpaid. Now, with Maïmouna Doucouré behind the camera and FKA twigs in front of it, the project has the creative architecture to match the subject's scale.
Watch this space. As production moves forward through fall 2026 and into the festival circuit, movieott.com will have the latest on casting additions, trailer drops, and streaming availability across all major platforms — Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, and beyond. For fans of prestige cinema and the kind of true stories that genuinely reshape how we see history, this is the biopic to follow.
