Clarissa - Official Trailer - In Select Theaters December

Clarissa is a drama about a Lagos socialite whose party preparations bring her back into contact with friends from her youth and the loves and regrets tied to their shared past. Arie and Chuko Esiri r

A day before a party brings past relationships back to life. In Clarissa, Clarissa, a Lagos society woman, unexpectedly reunites with people she was close to in her youth while preparing to welcome guests at home. As shared memories resurface over the course of one night, love, desire, and lost possibilities are placed alongside the present-day party.

An adaptation that moves a day in London to Lagos

Ari Esiri and Chuko Esiri transpose Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel 『Mrs Dalloway』 to contemporary Lagos. As in the original, the film centers on a woman preparing for a party, while exploring within Nigeria’s urban landscape the traces that class, gender, and past choices leave on today’s social relationships.

Clarissa in the present and the perspective of her youth

Sophie Okonedo plays Clarissa, while India Amarteifio plays Clarissa in her youth. David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, Tosin Jimoh, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Fortune Nwafor join the cast, forming a group of characters from the present and from memory. This arrangement does not treat one character’s past as mere exposition, but instead shows how relationships from different periods overlap.

Limited U.S. theatrical release in December

Distributed by NEON, the film opens in select U.S. theaters on December 11, 2026. Following its premiere at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, the theatrical release presents in its trailer both the party’s glittering surface and the flow of memories trembling beneath it.

Source: Official trailer · BFI London Film Festival film information · Release information