British music star FKA twigs is to play Josephine Baker in a new biopic of the Roaring Twenties icon who became a hero of the French Resistance and the American civil rights movement.
The film will tell the "incredible story of the magnificent, incomparable" dancer and singer, its producers said at the Cannes Film Festival, which began on Tuesday.
Born into grinding poverty in St Louis, Missouri, in June 1906, Baker became one of the first global superstars.
But she refused to perform before segregated audiences in the United States and spent much of her life in France.
She was the first black woman to be given a place in the Pantheon, where France's national heroes are buried, after helping the French Resistance during World War II.
Baker also spied on the Nazis for the British and US intelligence services.
She died in Paris in April 1975.
FKA twigs, who is also a singer and choreographer, said Baker's "extraordinary legacy is such an inspiration to me and to so many people".
The Grammy winner - real name Tahliah Debrett Barnett - said she "cannot wait" to bring "her fight, her love, her losses, her talent, and her heroism to the big screen".
As well as aiding the Allied fight against fascism, Baker was a leading voice against racial discrimination in her homeland and spoke alongside Martin Luther King Jr at the 1963 march on Washington.
The film, by rising French director Maïmouna Doucouré of Cuties fame, will start shooting later this year.
Producers StudioCanal said they had worked with Baker's sons, Jean-Claude Bouillon Baker and Brian Bouillon Baker, on the script.
Source: AFP
