Actress Sonoya Mizuno is set to make her directorial debut with a project titled Stages, backed by Film4 and A24.
Specific details about the project remain under wraps, but we are told Mizuno’s own dance background inspires the story.
Mizuno trained at the Royal Ballet School in London. She then danced in several ballet companies, including the English National Ballet, Dresden Semper Oper Ballet, and Scottish Ballet.
Sonoya made her screen acting debut in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Her other film credits include Annihilation, Crazy Rich Asians, La La Land, and Shortcomings. Her television credits include the lead role in Devs, as well as Maniac and House of the Dragon.
Stages will be produced by Peter Rice, and Agile Films’ Myles Payne and Sam Ritzenberg, alongside Alex Garland, with whom Mizuno has had a long on-screen collaboration.
Speaking with Deadline about working with Garland on Devs in 2020, Mizuno said: “He’s always open to people giving their ideas, he takes them on, and it feels like a very equal place.”
“I’d say for me, a lot of the collaboration would be between me, Alex, and Rob Hardy, the DP, because this was the third thing we were doing together, the three of us. By this point, we’d developed this working relationship, which had always felt collaborative and also unique to the three of us.”