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Following its breakout from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the nonagenarian action comedy Thelma, starring Oscar nominee June Squibb (Nebraska) and the late Richard Roundtree (Shaft) is heading to theaters on June 21.
The feature marks the directorial debut of Josh Margolin, who also wrote the film has Squibb as the titular Thelma, a feisty 93-year-old grandmother who gets conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger). The film follows Thelma and her family attempting to get her money back. Check out the trailer below.
Loosely inspired by a real-life experience of Margolin’s grandmother, Squibb was eager to do most of her own stunts, getting praised by the director.
“When we first got that scooter, we realized it could go up to about 25-30 miles an hour; we ended up putting a limiter on it because we were like, this is insane. But what was really cool was that June was really game and excited to do as much of the scooter driving herself as possible, which was not something we went into the shoot planning on doing,” Margolin told Entertainment Weekly. “But it became clear as things progressed that, basically, that was the only way it was going to be. Once she got on that scooter, she was like, ‘I want to do this.'”
The film features the final performance of Shaft icon Roundtree and co-stars Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Malcolm McDowell.
