Jumai Yusuf Horror Film ‘Cocoa Doll’ Launches Sales at TIFF

Jumai Yusuf’s feature debut Cocoa Doll is being launched to international buyers at the Toronto Film Festival this week.

Co-producers and sales agents The Dazey Phase and Unger Media are shopping the horror pic about, Nora, a young Black woman who takes a caregiving job for the McNeils, a rich white family, only to discover they’re hiding a deadly secret.

Cocoa Doll was previously selected for the Black List’s Muslim List. Yusuf wrote and directed the indie, which was inspired by caricatures of Black people from the Jim Crow era not lost to history.

“When I set out to write a horror film, I knew I had to tap into the things that truly haunt me. Cocoa Doll is my way of reminding people that Jim Crow isn’t some distant past. It’s a horrifyingly recent chapter of American history,” Yusuf said in a statement.

Her short film Nate & John premiered at Tribeca and won the Gold House Cultural Impact Award at the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase during the Cannes Film Festival. Yusuf also directed The Eid Gift for Rifelion’s Ramadan America anthology that bowed at SXSW.

“When we first read Jumai’s extraordinary script, we were blown away by the multiple layers of the story and how it flips everything you think you know about our country on its head. We have no doubt viewers will be cheering Nora on as she realizes there’s more to the McNeils than meets the eye,” Unger Media CEO Jonathan Unger said in a statement.

Recent series from Unger Media include the podcast Shattering The System, hosted by NPR journalist Sonari Glinton, and the indie film Mysterious Ways, directed by Paul Oremland.

The Dazey Phase slate includes the Sundance 2024 NEXT winner Desire Lines, the horror comedy Blue Balls and a book adaptation of Written in the Stars.