The idea for Wildcat, Ethan Hawke’s biopic of the Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor, formed when his daughter, Maya, auditioned for Juilliard. In the family kitchen, she practiced a monologue crafted from entries of O’Connor’s childhood diaries. That experience inspired both father and daughter to bring the writer’s story to the big screen. Taking place in 1950, the film follows 24-year-old O’Connor (Maya Hawke) from New York City to Georgia, where she visits her mother, Regina (Laura Linney). While there, she receives a diagnosis of lupus—the same disease that took her father’s life. The film intercuts O’Connor’s struggles with illness, her craft, and her faith with reenactments of the writer’s seminal short stories, which are also acted by Hawke and Linney. As the line between fiction and biography blurs, a compelling portrait of a complicated literary giant emerges. —Paulina Prosnitz