Civil rights drama 'The Best of Enemies,' starring Academy Award nominee Taraji P Henson ('Hidden Figures') and Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell ('Three Billboards Outside Ebbing', 'Missouri'), has been slated to release on April 5 next year. 

Based on a true story, 'The Best of Enemies,' centers on the unlikely relationship between Ann Atwater (Henson), an outspoken civil rights activist, and CP Ellis (Rockwell), a local Ku Klux Klan leader who reluctantly co-chaired a community summit, battling over the desegregation of schools in Durham, North Carolina during the racially-charged summer of 1971.

This unlikely friendship was originally documented in author Osha Gray Davidson’s book, 'The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South,' published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2007.

The incredible events that unfolded would change Durham and the lives of Atwater and Ellis forever.

Henson portrays Atwater, a North Carolina Durham civil rights activist who battled KKK leader Ellis (Rockwell) for a decade until 1971, when the two agreed to co-chair a two-week community meeting to deal with a court-ordered school desegregation decree.

That event changed both of their lives. For Henson, this is another feather added to the historically significant roles she's played about heroic deeds of colored people, starting right from 'The Help' to 'Hidden Figures.'

Babou Ceesay portrays Bill Riddick, who reluctantly persuaded Ellis and Atwater to head the community summit to try and reach a compromise.

The cast also includes Anne Heche, Wes Bentley, Bruce McGill, John Gallagher Jr., and Nick Searcy.

Robin Bissell, an executive producer on 'The Hunger Games' and 'Seabiscuit,' is making his directorial debut from his own script, inspired by Osha Gray Davidson’s book 'The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South.'

Producers include Danny Strong, Fred Bernstein, Matt Berenson, Bissell, Dominique Telson, and Material Pictures’ Tobey Maguire and Matthew Plouffe. Rick Jackson and Jeremiah Samuels are executive producers.