Maude Apatow and Mike Faist are set to star in The Maid of Orleans, the follow-up feature from writer-director Sarah Elizabeth Mintz. Mintz wrote the screenplay and will also direct the film, with Astute Films financing the project. Production began this week.
The film follows a young film school graduate who travels to Paris to work as an assistant to a famously talented and complicated director on a French production of Joan of Arc. As she navigates the pressures of the job, she must also work alongside her demanding boss, placing her in an environment where professional ambition and the challenges of working under a difficult filmmaker collide.
The Maid of Orleans marks Mintz’s follow-up to Good Girl Jane, her autobiographical feature directorial debut about a lonely teenager who falls in with a charming drug dealer and becomes entangled in his meth ring. The story was inspired by Mintz’s own life, giving the filmmaker’s first feature a deeply personal foundation.
Good Girl Jane premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, where it won Best Narrative Feature. Its star, Rain Spencer, also took home the festival’s Best Performance award for her breakout lead role. The film later received a theatrical release through Tribeca Films and currently holds a 67% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Mintz developed her filmmaking voice at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her thesis film, Transit, starred Dakota Johnson, while Norwegian director Joachim Trier has been cited as a mentor. Her return to feature filmmaking with The Maid of Orleans also reunites her with Astute Films, which produced Good Girl Jane. The company’s involvement in the new project makes the film the second collaboration between Mintz and Astute Films.
Mintz is producing The Maid of Orleans alongside Shuli Harel and Jeff David. With production now underway, the project brings together a filmmaker following an award-winning debut and two actors whose recent work has placed them among the more recognizable emerging performers of their generation.
Apatow is best known for playing Lexi Howard on HBO’s Emmy- and BAFTA-nominated series Euphoria, which recently concluded its three-season run. Her work on the series established her as a prominent young performer, and The Maid of Orleans gives her another major feature role as production gets underway. She is represented by WME, Mosaic and Ziffren Brittenham.
Faist joins the project following strong reviews for the limited series East of Eden, which premiered on Netflix alongside Florence Pugh and Christopher Abbott. The actor previously earned a Tony nomination for playing Connor Murphy in the Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen. He later made his major film breakthrough as Riff, the leader of the Jets, in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 adaptation of West Side Story.
Faist subsequently starred as tennis champion Art Donaldson opposite Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in Luca Guadagnino’s 2024 film Challengers. The Maid of Orleans marks his first film role since Challengers, making the new project his next feature appearance following a role that brought him further attention on the big screen. He is represented by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
The combination of Apatow and Faist gives The Maid of Orleans two performers with recent television and film credits that have kept them in the spotlight. Apatow arrives from Euphoria, while Faist follows a run that includes West Side Story, Challengers and the limited series East of Eden. Their involvement also places the film within a smaller-scale drama space built around a filmmaker whose previous feature received recognition at Tribeca.
For Mintz, the project represents the next stage of a feature filmmaking career that began with the autobiographical Good Girl Jane. That debut earned the top narrative feature prize at Tribeca, while Spencer’s performance was separately recognized by the festival. With Astute Films returning as financier after producing Mintz’s first feature, the filmmaker is entering her next project with an established creative and production relationship already in place.
The setting of The Maid of Orleans also places the story within the world of filmmaking itself. Its central character is a young film school graduate arriving in Paris to work as an assistant on a French production of Joan of Arc. The experience puts her alongside a famously talented but complicated director, with the pressures of the job and the demands of her boss forming the central professional challenge of the story.
With production now underway, The Maid of Orleans is shaping up as a closely watched smaller-scale drama moving through production this fall. The project brings together two rising stars from some of the past few years’ most talked-about television and film projects with a filmmaker following an award-winning debut. It is also backed by a filmmaker-financier pairing that has already worked together successfully on Mintz’s first feature.
As production begins, the film’s combination of a filmmaking-centered story, Paris setting, emerging talent and Mintz’s follow-up to Good Girl Jane gives The Maid of Orleans a distinct identity among the smaller dramas currently moving through production. With Apatow and Faist leading the cast and Mintz writing and directing, the project marks an important next feature for all three.
