Catherine Keener and Ellen Page have signed on to star in the drama, An American Crime for First Look Studios.

The movie is the true story of Sylvia Likens, a 16-year-old girl who died in 1965 while under the care of a woman named Gertrude Baniszewski. The Hollywood Reporter adds she put Sylvia through an ordeal that included beatings in the guise of discipline, burnings with cigarettes and matches and scalding hot baths, among other tortures. Encouraging a Lord of the Flies-type cult, Baniszewski involved her own children and children from her Indianapolis neighborhood in the punishments.

Keener is playing Baniszewski, while Page plays Likens; Tommy O'Haver has written the script and will direct An American Crime.