The Oscar-nominated star of “Hotel Rwanda” returns with “Mouse,” playing Helen Bell, a British classical pianist in 2002 Arkansas whose teenage daughter dies in a car accident. Callie’s shy best friend Minnie spirals into grief, and the two find an unlikely refuge in each other.
Okonedo signed on from the script alone. “It just felt so true, but in a really unusual way,” she says. The performance earned her an award from the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Black Cinema.
Her heartbreak plays out in tiny ripples across her face, and the scene where Helen learns her daughter is gone is among the film’s most devastating. Off camera, it stuck with her. “I am incredibly sensitive, which makes me good for acting,” she says. She came home feeling heavy. “It’s part of my job.” “Mouse,” directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, is about identity, motherhood, loss, and dreams deferred.
She also stars in Arie and Chuko Esiri’s “Clarissa,” where she plays a society woman in Lagos who is hosting a party and unexpectedly runs into close friends from her youth.
The film is a reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri and Toheeb Jimoh co-star in the film which premiered at Cannes in the Directors’ Fortnight.
“Clarissa” opens in select theaters on December 11 and “Mouse” releases in theaters November 6.
Samantha Ofole-Prince is a U.S. based journalist and movie critic who covers industry-specific news that includes television, film and music.