Film: "Moonlight"
A timeless story of human connection and self-discovery, this tender, lyrical drama chronicles the life of a young black man growing up in Miami.
Writer-director Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy) returns with an impeccably crafted study of African-American masculinity. Though his story is set in Miami, Jenkins shuns the familiar neon-lit aesthetic with a different kind of life in an area hit by a crack epidemic. Bullied at school and beaten down by a harsh home life, young Chiron risks becoming a statistic: another black man dominated and ultimately destroyed by the system. As he grows, it becomes clear that his real battle is an internal one: reckoning with his complex love for his best friend.
Unfolding in three chapters, Moonlight plunges us into an impressionistic vision of Chiron's psyche in which sensuality, pain and unhealed wounds take center stage. Anchored in an unforgettable performance by emerging talent Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight explores the human need to feel connected. But although its themes could be called "universal," they are firmly grounded in a specific understanding of African-American experience. This film was waiting to be made, and Jenkins was the one to make it. D: Barry Jenkins, US, 2016, 119m
Part of the MLK Jr. Celebration
