After a mountain-moving performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon—for which a Best Actress Oscar seems to be calling their name—it was only a matter of time before the offers started coming in hard and fast for Lily Gladstone, but they’re still sticking to their creative guns.
Per Deadline, the Fancy Dance star is slated to spearhead the cast of The Memory Police, an upcoming sci-fi film from director Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale) and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, whose mere involvement with a sci-fi film already telegraphs most of what you need to know about it.
The Memory Police certainly seems in line with the types of stories that Gladstone is interested in telling, and especially keeps with the pattern of exploring the subject of genocide as we saw with Killers of the Flower Moon.
Speaking during a Q&A after a Los Angeles screening of Scorsese’s film, Gladstone noted of The Memory Police:
It’s on an unnamed island at an unnamed place, unnamed time, so it takes place nowhere and therefore everywhere. I think anybody who comes from a world culture or a history where there’s been a systemic effort to erase your sense of who you are, your memories, your language, your culture—in this film, birds are disappeared because they’re deemed unnecessary.
Based on the 1994 Yōko Ogawa novel of the same name, The Memory Police follows the plight of a novelist who lives on an unnamed island in an unknown year. On this island, a mysterious phenomenon causes inhabitants to lose their memories, and, by extension, their attachments to certain objects. A task force known as the Memory Police enforces removals of any object that might retrigger someone’s memories, and those who don’t comply or otherwise try to hold on to their memories become targets of the state.
Gladstone will also reteam with Scorsese on The Memory Police, with the longtime filmmaker serving as an executive producer on the project.
(featured image: Apple TV+)
