“Radium Girls” will soon be hitting theaters. Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s feature directorial debut will open April 3 at the Quad Cinema in New York City, a press release has confirmed. The historical drama made its debut at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.
Written by Mohler and Brittany Shaw (“Garden Death”), the film is based on Kate Moore’s “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women,” an account of the women exposed to — and poisoned by — radium while working with glow-in-the-dark paint.
“Radium Girls” centers on sisters Bessie (Joey King, “The Act”) and Josephine (Abby Quinn, “Landline”), who paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials at an American Radium factory in New Jersey. “They take pride in their jobs and Bessie dreams of becoming an actress in the new motion picture industry and having crowds of adoring fans. However, when her younger sister Josephine becomes ill, the sisters uncover the unknown truth about radium: it’s a deadly poison,” the press release describes. “With Jo’s life dwindling, just as those of her former colleagues have, Bessie becomes determined to bring the horrors of radium poisoning to light and fights not only for her sister, but also for the rest of the women around her; she becomes a powerful advocate as she risks everything to stand up to the corporation that provides her family’s livelihood.”
Susan Heyward (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Cara Seymour (“The Knick”) round out the cast.
“Radium Girls” won the Alfred P. Sloan Award at Tribeca as well as the Audience Award at The Heartland Film Festival.
Following “Radium Girls,” Pilcher helmed female-fronted WWII drama “Liberté: A Call to Spy,” which screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year. She also directed the doc “Reno Finds Her Mom.”
This marks Mohler’s first directing credit. She previously wrote and produced the series “Gunslingers.”
King picked up Emmy and Golden Globe nods for portraying Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a real-life victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in Hulu’s “The Act.” “Fargo” and “The Kissing Booth” are among her other credits.
You can see Quinn now in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” Her recent projects include “After the Wedding” and the “Mad About You” reboot.
