Carrie Coon transforms for Guy Nattiv’s cult thriller The Liberation
The actress plays a Holocaust survivor who abandons her family for a spiritual commune in the 1980s, a role that has drawn early awards buzz ahead of the film's November release.
Bleecker Street released the first trailer on Monday for The Liberation, Guy Nattiv’s dramatic thriller starring Carrie Coon in a role that has generated awards-season attention since the film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.
Coon plays Rita, a 1980s New Jersey housewife and Holocaust survivor haunted by her past. She encounters a magnetic spiritual leader, Ricki, played by Lily James, and leaves her husband (Tracy Letts) and two daughters (Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young) to join an all-female commune. When her daughters arrive to rescue her, they become drawn into the group’s world, forcing Rita to choose between her family and the life she believes can save her.
A transformation on screen
The film showcases Coon’s range through significant physical and emotional changes. As Rita joins the commune and takes on the new name Naya—a practice common in cults—Coon lost 10 pounds and cut her hair short.
Director Nattiv observed the shift in Coon’s performance: “Rita is the matriarch of her family. She’s a strong woman, intelligent—and then she’s not. She loses everything. It was amazing to see how she shifts between Naya and Rita,” according to Vanity Fair. Coon told the publication that audiences may find the vulnerability unusual. “People are struck by me playing someone who feels weaker or more frail, because I’m often put into roles where I’m strong, verbal, intellectual, brassy,” she said.
She allowed that tiredness to inform her performance rather than try to conceal it. When Rita’s storyline moved to the isolated commune, Coon’s family left town and she changed her filming location.
Finding the character’s complexity
Coon was drawn to Rita’s decision to pursue self-actualization and healing by leaving her family in the 1980s. “We all have that moment,” she told Vanity Fair.
Nattiv’s personal connection
Director Nattiv drew inspiration from his own family history. At age eight, his family took him to seminars with his grandmother, later learning she had joined a cult and left his grandfather and family. Years later, he returned with a camera seeking answers. He approached the project with empathy, recognizing that the cult “tried to free” his grandmother from her trauma as a Holocaust survivor. “She had the courage to do something very uncommon: to leave your family, say goodbye to your daughters and your husband and go into the unknown and try to save yourself,” he said at Deadline’s Contenders London.
Release schedule
Bleecker Street is releasing The Liberation in limited theatrical run starting November 6 in New York and Los Angeles for Oscar qualification, with a wider release set for January 8.
This article was compiled by the Glamorade editorial desk from the official announcements and reporting listed under Sources.
