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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

And today I'm talking with director Nia Dacosta, who's had a meteoric rise over the past few years.

Little Woods, her first feature in 2018, was an intimate story about two sisters in North Dakota, who turned to a life of crime to make ends meet.

It got a lot of attention, including from Jordan Peel, who later brought DeCosta on to reimagined the horror classic Candyman.

That film made DeCasta the first black woman to direct a movie that opened at number one at the U.S. box office.

DeCasta made history again with the Marvels, becoming the youngest director and first black woman to helm a film in the

Marvel universe. And now she's turned to something even more personal, a project she wrote years

ago and never let go of. It's called Hedda, and it's DeCostas take on Hennrick Ipsen's 1891 play

Hedda Gables. In DeCosta's hands, the story becomes a dark exploration of a woman

suffocating in a life she never wanted, trapped in a 1950s English manor house over the

course of one wild unsettling night. Tessa Thompson stars as Hedda, and here's a scene at the

start of the film where police interrogate her about what happened that night.

Hedda, Tessman.

Is that right? This is your husband's husband.

Hedda is fine.

So could you tell us the events of the evening the way you remember them leading up to the shooting?

My memory's a bit fuzzy.

It was a party after all.

Certainly I can do my best.

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