How ‘Master’ Director Mariama Diallo Shocked Regina Hall With Her Horror Script (Video)

thewrap.com:

Sundance studio, along with stars Regina Hall and Zoe Renee. Hall stars as Gail, who has just become the first woman of color to be named “Master” (dean) of a residence hall at Ancaster College, an elite New England institution where Jasmine (Renee) is eagerly beginning her first year.

Soon, both women discover that the college is cursed by the spirit of a woman who was lynched there hundreds of years ago. Gail and Jasmine go through terrifying experiences in which daily casual bigotry is compounded by nightmarish hauntings.Diallo, whose debut short film “Hair Wolf” won a jury prize at Sundance in 2018, used her own experience as a Black woman at an elite, predominantly white college as inspiration to write the screenplay for her first feature. “I was lucky enough to meet, as professors, Black women who had been there for a while, and my relationship to them was really important,” she told TheWrap. “It was really important to me getting through the college experience.

And there’s a lot that I could see through, you know, what little I could glean as a student, that they were also contending with at the same time.”She added that academia, so often perceived as serious and important, can in reality be “hilariously petty,” which in her mind, made it a perfect setting.

As for why she chose the horror genre, Diallo said that she’s always found it fun, but also sincere and truthful. “There’s something that I thought was very honest about portraying what Gail and Jasmine go through as a horror experience.”Hall jokingly cut in to say how shocked she was when she read the script and learned what hideous things were in store for her character and Renee’s. “I saw this sweet face that Mariama has,” said the actress, who also stars.