Zola

Zola is a crime comedy-drama about a Detroit waitress who is talked into a weekend road trip to Florida by a customer she has just met. The customer is an exotic dancer, and she brings along her boyfriend and a roommate who turns out to be far more controlling and dangerous than he first appears. What begins as a chance to make easy money dancing at clubs in Tampa turns into a chaotic two-day ordeal involving a violent hustler and a string of bad decisions. The film is based on a viral social media thread in which the real Zola recounted the trip in real time.

Janicza Bravo directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jeremy O. Harris. It is her second feature, following Lemon, and her first film after the short Pauline Alone. Taylour Paige plays Zola, with Riley Keough as Stefani, Colman Domingo as X, and Nicholas Braun as Derrek. The production had a budget of about 5 million dollars and took in roughly the same amount worldwide.

Audience response was moderate: on IMDb it holds a 6.4 rating from around 20,000 votes, and on TMDB a 6.2 from roughly 293 votes. Critics were more enthusiastic, giving it a 7.5 average across 256 reviews.