Till

Centered around Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler), Till examines the prelude and aftereffects of the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white woman (Haley Bennett) in her parents' store.

Director Chinonye Chukwu's gut-wrenching film is broken into two-halves, the first 4o minutes gives us the dark foreboding leading to events which take place off-screen after Emmett is dragged from his relatives' home in the dark of night by armed men. The second-half of the film, which begins with the return of Emmett's body to Chicago, would spur Mamie into action struggling to get justice for her son in Mississipi, and, failing that, starting the second-half of her life as an educator and activist in the Civil Rights Movement.

Built entirely around her performance, Deadwyler shines as the heart of the film as we watch Mamie discover reserves of strength in the wake of losing her only child. While the early scenes playing on a mother's premonitions a bit more than I'd like, the sequences certainly fit the narrative as the script by Chukwu, Michael Reilly, and Keith Beauchamp which frames the entire series of events through Mamie's perspective. The film ends with a note about the 2022 passing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act making lynching, the threat of which continues to be used as a method of intimidation today by white supremacists such as in the threat to NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, a federal hate crime.

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• Title: Till
• IMDb: link