Director Clement Virgo adapts true story of slavery into futuristic fairy tale in 'Steal Away'

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author Karolyn Smardz Frost's book “Steal Away Home,” which tells the true story of Cecelia Reynolds, a 15-year-old freedom seeker who started a new life in Toronto but maintained a correspondence with her former owner in Louisville, Ky., who was around the same age. Instead of being set in the 1850s, Virgo's adaptation takes place in an unspecified dystopian time period that features futuristic, Southern-inspired fashion and vintage cars. Police officers patrol the streets, arresting refugees who enter the state without proper immigration documents, reflecting contemporary migration crises. Virgo said he and his partner and the film's co-writer, Tamara Faith Berger, decided they wanted to put the story inside a dark fairy-tale world, creating their own genre. "What if we kind of ... try to take the basic story, locate it in a dark fantasy genre, a dark fairy tale genre, and have it...