TORONTO, ONT – Nia DaCosta was thunderstruck when she first read Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” in drama school. But when she saw a production of it, something was missing.

“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not as crazy as I thought it would feel,’” DaCosta says. “I thought: I guess I knew what I wanted to pull out of it as a text.”

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More than a decade after that first encounter, and coming on the heels of her Marvel Studios film “The Marvels,” DaCosta was to premiere her “Hedda” at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. The film, starring Tessa Thompson, is the latest in a long litany of adaptations the 1890 play, but it's shot through with a fiery understanding — though not a defense — of Ibsen’s eternal heroine.

“Even though I love Hedda, she’s unforgivable and u

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