U.S. Trailer for Cannes Favorite Clarissa Finds Beauty In Suffering

A highlight of the 2026 Directors’ Fortnight is, unlike many Cannes selections, not long in waiting. Neon will release Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa—a take on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway that leans into the melodramatic stylings of Nollywood, Almodóvar, and Todd Haynes—on December 11, ahead of which comes the first trailer.

As Rory O’Connor said in our review out of Cannes, “The movie, which is set to be released by NEON in the U.S., is directed by Arie and Chuko Esiri, twin filmmakers who broke out in 2020 with Eyimofe: This Is My Desire—another Berlinale premiere that went on to play the festival circuit before winning the siblings a joint Best Director award at the African equivalent of the Oscars. Similar to that movie, Clarissa appears to be the latest in an ongoing experiment to capture the heightened and melodramatic mood of Nollywood cinema through the lens of the arthouse—not as a means to subvert those tropes, necessarily, but more to rework and reexamine them as filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar and Todd Haynes have done over the years with telenovelas and daytime TV.”

Here’s the official synopsis: “Across a single day in Lagos, Nigeria, Clarissa (Sophie Okonedo) prepares to host a high society party at her home, as her complicated past begins to consume her, in the form of now-distant friends and loves from her youth. Simultaneously, Septimus (Fortune Nwafo[r]), a young soldier, is haunted by his own memories of the horrors he has witnessed and endured. As the perspectives traverse past and present, across the bourgeois class and those too easily forgotten by society, a delicate portrait of contemporary Nigeria emerges. Directors Arie and Chuko, adapting Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, take the renowned source material and deliver a unique and deeply felt story.”

Watch the preview below: