It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2019. It was released in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2020, by Universal Pictures and in North America on February 21, 2020, by Amazon Studios, after an awards-qualifying run on December 13, 2019.
Plot
Jean Seberg, an American actress known for playing the female lead in Jean-Luc Godard's film Breathless, bids her husband, Romain Gary, and child farewell in Paris before leaving for Los Angeles. On the jet flight in first class, she witnesses a Black activist insisting on sitting in first class and offering to pay for the seats. The activist demands preferential treatment for Malcolm X's widow, claiming she should be treated like "royalty"; Seberg appears to be attracted to the passenger, who introduces himself as Hakim Jamal, a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP).
Upon landing in the U.S., Seberg notices a group of Black activists protesting at the airport, indicating their displeasure with the treatment Jamal and his traveling companions received on the flight. She joins them and raises her fist in a Black power salute in solidarity. Unbeknownst to her, undercover FBI agents, including Jack Solomon, are at the airport. Solomon suggests the FBI shadow her activities while she is in the U.S. and arranges to have her phone conversations tapped due to her perceived association with the Black Power movement.
After telling Jamal she knows the incident on the plane was staged to get her attention, Seberg begins a sexual relationship with him, despite both of them being married. The FBI's surveillance program COINTELPRO begins to target Seberg, recording her and Jamal having sex and playing it to Jamal's wife, Dorothy, over the phone.
Jamal ends things with Seberg after Dorothy confronts him, leaving Seberg devastated. She becomes increasingly suspicious, fearing her daily life is being monitored. Solomon anonymously calls Seberg to warn her to sever her ties with the movement.
Seberg becomes pregnant by an unknown person. Continuing their surveillance and harassment of her for years, COINTELPRO agents create a rumor that the baby was fathered by a member of the BPP and feed it to the media. Seberg attempts suicide, which leads to the miscarriage of her unborn daughter. The combination of her daughter's death and the FBI's smear campaign about the child's paternity send her into a deep depression.
Seberg announces she would sue the publication that published the rumor. Solomon, wanting to come clean, shows her the FBI file on her at a bar, confirming her suspicions.
After the encounter, the real-life Seberg is explained to have moved back to Paris while still supporting the BPP and died in 1979 due to a probable suicide.
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 35% based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Seberg's frustratingly superficial treatment of a fascinating true story does a disservice to its subject—and Kristen Stewart's performance in the central role."[20] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 54 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[21]
Time's annual best performances of the year list by Stephanie Zacharek listed Stewart as the tenth best performance of 2019.[22]
