Canadian actor Sarah Gadon plans to make her feature directorial debut with Lullabies for Little Criminals for Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures.

Gadon will also adapt the screenplay and produce alongside Brightlight Pictures chairman Shawn Williamson and VP of originals Emily Alden. Production is slated to take place in Montreal, according to a news release.

Lullabies for Little Criminals will be based on Canadian author Heather O’Neill’s 2006 debut novel of the same name, which was published by HarperCollins and won CBC’s Canada Reads literary contest. The story centres on a 13-year-old girl in Montreal who’s grappling with a volatile situation involving a dangerous local, and a negligent, widowed father who has a drug addiction.

Toronto-born Gadon is currently starring in director Carly Stone’s North of Normal, which made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sunday (Sept. 11), and was written by Alexandra Weir.

She is also this year’s TIFF Micki Moore Writer in Residency, a program meant to elevate and support women as they develop their feature-film screenplay. The program runs at TIFF Bell Lightbox from September to November.

A former TIFF Rising Star, Gadon’s long list of acting credits includes Mary Harron’s Netflix/CBC limited series Alias Grace, Denis Villeneuve’s psychological drama Enemy, and David Cronenberg’s features Maps To The Stars, Cosmopolis and A Dangerous Method. She most recently served on the Competition Jury at the 78th Venice Film Festival and as a juror for TIFF’s 2020 Amplify Voices Award.

Gadon is currently in production on Michael Mann’s Ferrari. She is represented by CAA, Creative Drive Artists, Entertainment 360, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein. Williamson is repped by CAA.

Photo credit: Pierre Arnaud