From Rye Lane to The Big Sick, the Sundance Film Festival has long steered us true when it comes to movie excellence, which is why we’re on tenterhooks for Thelma, an unexpected action film with a cool 99% ‘fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Starring 94-year-old Academy Award nominee June Squibb (in her first leading role, no less) and The White Lotus’s Fred Hechinger, this one is all about an elderly woman who gets duped by a phone scammer.

Rather than sit back and fret over her losses, though, Thelma decides to take matters into her own hands… making for a marvellous tale of wit, warmth and women being their best and baddest selves.

Watch the trailer for Thelma below:

Already hooked? We don’t blame you one little bit. 

What’s Thelma about?

As per the official synopsis, the film begins as the eponymous Thelma Post gets duped out of $10,000 by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson.

Unable to get help from the police and unwilling to let the scammer get away with her money, she “sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her”, taking care to evade her concerned relatives as she does so.

Who stars in Thelma?

The incredibly watchable Squibb and Hechinger are joined by:

• Richard Roundtree (in one of his final roles)
• Parker Posey
• Clark Gregg
• Malcolm McDowell 
• Nicole Byer 
• Coral Peña 

What are people saying about Thelma?

Squibb, who did all her own stunts for this movie, tells IndieWire: “I’ve had stunt people work with me and do things that I was supposed to do, but nothing like this so much. It’s not easy because people think you’re crazy. I think [writer and director Josh Margolin] thought, ‘She can’t possibly do most of this stuff, so we’ll have this great stunt lady here ready to jump in.’ But I wanted to try as much as I could, and after reading the script, I really got excited about that scooter. I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be great.’”

Margolin, who was inspired by his own grandmother to create this movie, adds: “June did just so much more than we anticipated, which was wonderful for the movie. It is the ethos of the movie. It is the Tom Cruise of it all, doing it yourself, throwing yourself in there as much as possible. And we had a great stunt team. Ryan Sturz, our stunt coordinator, and June’s double [Heidi Pascoe] were so highly involved and stepping in as needed. But June was just like she was a dancer and Broadway performer for years. She’s a physical performer, too, in a way that I didn’t totally have an awareness of going into the project.”

When can we watch Thelma?

Thelma will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 19 July.

Images: Magnolia Pictures