Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots and Nina Hoss presented Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, a 1950s reimagining of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, in the festival’s Official Competition.
Tessa Thompson, the star of Creed and Thor: Ragnarok, presented Nia DaCosta’s Hedda at BFI Southbank on the South Bank on Sunday 12 October 2025. Imogen Poots and Nina Hoss joined her.
Thompson was born in Los Angeles in 1983. She began with the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, then drew notice as the civil rights activist Diane Nash in Selma. Passing brought a BAFTA nomination.
DaCosta, born in Brooklyn and raised in Harlem, trained at New York University and at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She cast Thompson in her first feature, Little Woods, and went on to Candyman and The Marvels.
Hedda moves Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to an English country estate in the 1950s. Newly married to a debt-ridden academic, Hedda hosts one long party and sets about ruining her guests. Thompson produced the film as well as taking the title role.
Poots plays Thea, and Hoss plays Eileen Lovborg, the former lover whose manuscript Hedda steals. The London screening was in the Official Competition of the 69th BFI London Film Festival, after the film opened at Toronto in September. It reached Prime Video on 29 October.