Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing has acquired Numa Perrier’s award-winning coming-of-age drama film, Jezebel. In January, it will bow on Netflix and premiere in select theaters.

After making its world premiere at SXSW this year, the film won for Best Director and Best Narrative Feature at the American Black Film Festival. It also won the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.

“Numa Perrier’s directorial debut delivers a beautiful balance of poignancy and humor to reveal truths about women, family and sisterhood in a way we rarely witness. Numa’s exploration of women’s relationships to their bodies, their inner life and their outer world is exciting to witness and we’re proud to amplify this new and exciting voice in cinema,” said ARRAY president Tilane Jones in a statement.

As our Shadow And Act interview with Perrier from earlier this year reads, Set in Las Vegas in 1998, the film is a semi-autobiographical take on Perrier’s own experiences being a camgirl (a webcam sex worker) while living in Sin City. When Jezebel begins, we follow nineteen-year-old Tiffany (Tiffany Tenille) as she struggles to find her place in a cramped studio apartment with her older sister Sabrina (Perrier), her sister’s boyfriend, her older brother and youngest sister. In the aftermath of their mother’s death, Sabrina introduces Tiffany to camgirl work as a means to an end. And why not? Sabrina herself is a phone sex operator, carrying the bills of the household with her late-night sessions. What transpires is, as Perrier once put it, a “bizarre,” complex, coming-of-age adventure about the relationship between sex work, personal entanglements and the realities of poverty in a city known for profiting off of “sin” at every turn.

Deadline first reported news of the acquisition.

Watch the trailer below:

 

READ MORE:

‘Jezebel’ Director Numa Perrier Is Just Getting Started

Photo: Jezebel 

From Harlem to Hollywood, get the Black entertainment news you need in your inbox daily.