Young lovers go on the run in the Queen & Slim trailer

Meli­na Mat­soukas has been a name to watch for some time now, hav­ing estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion for her­self on mer­it of her music video work, most notably and recent­ly singer Bey­on­cé Knowles-Carter’s clip for the sin­gle ​‘For­ma­tion’. With a seal of approval from the one and only Queen B, Mat­soukas is ready to make her debut as fea­ture film­mak­er, and a new­ly unveiled trail­er sug­gests that her arrival will not be a qui­et one.

The film’s called Queen & Slim, and it has a pow­der keg of a log­line: while on a first date, retail work­er Slim (Daniel Kalu­uya) and crim­i­nal defense attor­ney Queen (Jodie Turn­er-Smith) get pulled over by a white police offi­cer, and Slim kills the cop once their con­fronta­tion turns phys­i­cal. The two lovers then go on the lam, fueled both by their unde­ni­able chem­istry as well as the volatile racial com­po­nent of this par­tic­u­lar murder.

Though direct­ed by Mat­soukas – who brings a harsh, noc­tur­nal beau­ty to the footage on dis­play in the trail­er – this project has also attract­ed atten­tion for its screen­writer, Mas­ter of None break­out Lena Wait­he. While she’s the sole scribe of the script itself, she shares a sto­ry-by cred­it with James Frey, not­ed author of lie-strewn mem­oir ​‘A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces’.

It all adds up to a hot-but­ton provo­ca­tion dig­ging into the con­ver­sa­tion around black­ness and white­ness, the media’s por­tray­al of both, and how the addi­tion of law enforce­ment to the equa­tion sets every­thing on edge.

The trailer’s accom­pa­ny­ing copy makes the ear­ly com­par­i­son to such on-the-run adven­tures as Bon­nie and Clyde or Thel­ma and Louise. In their own ways, each pair was try­ing to escape some unde­sir­able ele­ment of their soci­ety, whether it be the squares or men writ large. It doesn’t take binoc­u­lars to see what Queen & Slim would like to put in their rearview.

Queen & Slim is set for release in the UK and US in November.