Keke Palmer is taking on her owner in Alice, coming to theaters March 18. An exclusive clip from the film is above.

Alice stars and is executive produced by Palmer, who plays the title character, a woman who escapes her plantation to find that it’s 1973. The film also stars Common and is directed by Krystin Ver Linden. According to the official description:

Alice (Keke Palmer) yearns for freedom as an enslaved person on a rural Georgia plantation. After a violent clash with its brutal and disturbed owner, Paul (Jonny Lee Miller), she flees through the neighboring woods and stumbles onto the unfamiliar sight of a highway, soon discovering the year is actually 1973. Rescued on the roadside by a disillusioned political activist named Frank (Common), Alice quickly comprehends the lies that have kept her in bondage and the promise of Black liberation. Inspired by true events, Alice is a modern empowerment story tracing Alice’s journey through the post-Civil Rights Era American South. Incredibly enough, the film is based on real events.

In a recent interview with Shadow and Act, Palmer talked about how she drew from strong Black women to portray her character. For her, she was able to use the film as a way to show how Black women kept their communities thriving despite extreme hardship.

“I believe that is the true existence of so many women in our community — in the spirit of our community itself. You have to know when you think about our history that only the strong survive because they were the ones that decided, ‘I want to keep going,'” she said. “They were the ones who had the thoughts and the feelings in their head to say, ‘You know what, there’s a reason to keep living.’ And I think we’re often told a perspective that I think is just as equally important. And it’s still somebody’s story that exists totally in a victimized and kind of crippling state. When the reality is our lineage, we would be obsolete if that was all of our stories.”

She also said that films like Alice are ones she wants to put out into the world.

“I want to be a part of the projects that I’m supposed to be a part of,” she said. “And it’s in alignment with what I want to put out in the world. If they don’t see me, they don’t see me. Sometimes that’s just not what it is. So, I think I learned to bring that to whatever I do [in Hollywood.] And I brought that to Alice as far as being on the set and being who I am.”

Krystin Ver Linden

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