NOTE: This article is a republication- Source Kirkus (by Michael Schaub).
Kristen Stewart will play Susan Sontag in a film about the essayist and novelist, Variety reports.
Stewart, known for her roles in films including Twilight, Still Alice, and Spencer, will tackle the role in a movie based on Benjamin Moser’s 2019 biography, Sontag: Her Life and Work. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and received a starred review from Kirkus, with a critic calling it “a nuanced, authoritative portrait of a legendary artist.”
Sontag made her literary debut in 1963 with the novel The Benefactor, following that up two years later with the essay collection Against Interpretation. Her other books included Styles of Radical Will, The Volcano Lover, and Regarding the Pain of Others. Sontag died in 2004 after first being diagnosed with cancer in the 1970s; she wrote about the disease in her 1978 book, Illness as Metaphor.
The film, titled Sontag, will be directed by Kirsten Johnson (director of the documentaries Cameraperson and Dick Johnson Is Dead) and written by Johnson and Lisa Kron, the Tony Award–winning playwright (Fun Home).
Producer Gabrielle Tana said the film will incorporate documentary footage to be shot at the Berlin Film Festival where Stewart will talk about playing Sontag in the movie.
“It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it,” Tana said. “Kirsten [Johnson] has a wonderful approach to storytelling, and this is reflective of that, so she will use documentary in it.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.