Florid­i­an hell breaks loose in the first trail­er for the rip-roar­ing Zola

Though the 2020 edi­tion of the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val and the pre-pan­dem­ic world it took place in now feel impos­si­bly remote, the first trail­er for its buzzy US Dra­mat­ic Com­pe­ti­tion pre­mière title Zola is now here to refresh our mem­o­ries in vivid fash­ion. The long-await­ed look at Jan­icza Bra­vo​’s provoca­tive thriller has arrived, awash in bul­lets and flut­ter­ing dol­lar bills – it’s going to be a hot summer.

The film adapts a series of 148 tweets thread­ed in 2015 by one Azi­ah Wells (por­trayed in the film by Tay­lour Paige), using her @zolarmoon han­dle to recount the tale of a calami­tous road trip she once took with a fel­low strip­per the film names Ste­fani (Riley Keough, doing Bhad Bha­bie voice). They set out from Detroit to Flori­da with Stefani’s boyfriend (Nicholas Braun, bet­ter known as Succession’s Cousin Greg) and her volatile pimp X (Col­man Domin­go) in tow.

The plan is to make as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble, but the ​‘how’ grad­u­al­ly changes from strip­ping to some­thing more lucra­tive and less legal. All hell breaks loose, and the for­mal make­up of the film fol­lows suit, as the gor­geous 35mm pho­tog­ra­phy is punc­tu­at­ed by dig­i­tal inserts, self­ies, and oth­er sig­ni­fiers of the mid-’10s peri­od in which the film is set.

In her report from Sun­dance an eter­ni­ty ago, Han­nah Wood­head had plen­ty of pos­i­tive things to say about the polar­iz­ing eye­brow-rais­er: ““There’s a lot to admire about Zola all the same – it’s a frank and extreme­ly fun­ny account of one wild week­end, approach­ing sex traf­fick­ing in a bold new way as well as exam­in­ing the racial ten­sion between Zola and Stefani.—

As the Amer­i­can pub­lic returns to cin­e­mas over the com­ing months, movies as brash and exhil­a­rat­ing as this one will be a wel­come balm to audi­ences sore for the immer­sive inten­si­ty that only hits in the the­atri­cal envi­ron­ment. Though it may be steeped in the imagery of the inter­net, A24 was right to hold the film until it could be seen on the big screen.

Zola comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 30 June. A release date for the UK has yet to be set.