Black Films @ Sundance 2016: "Southside With You" and "Morris From America"

A relative once told me that he wished there were more quality films with predominantly black casts that didn't cover familiar ground like growing up in the hood and slavery. He doesn't discount their importance, but would like to see more stories of black people in unfamiliar situations or slices of different kinds of lives. This year's Sundance Festival seems to offer a couple of those, stories featuring black people doing everyday things in a manner rarely shown by Hollywood, in addition to "Birth of a Nation" which tells a different kind of slavery tale. Both have had their rights purchased. I'm guessing they'll receive limited releases later this year.

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"Southside With You" is about the first date between Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers) and Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) during the summer of 1989. A critic favorably compares it to Before Sunrise, a romance that's basically a series of conversations between two strangers wandering around Vienna, Austria, with a bit of discussion of black identity. It seems like Parker did not try to perfectly emulate his voice. This early review makes it sound like a cool romance. It gives a lot of details about the plot, in case you like to see movies with as little advance knowledge as possible. And here's a brief clip.

Sundance Film Review: ‘Southside With You’



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"Morris From America" is a dramedy about 13-year-old aspiring rapper Morris (Markees Christmas) coming of age in Germany with his widowed father (Craig Robinson). He grapples with living in a place where everyone looks and speaks differently, and may find young love with a girl who might expand his musical tastes. It sounds like the plot follows familiar coming-of-age story beats, but praises the relationship between Morris and his dad, the hip-hop and EDM score, the story's maturity, and the writing of the characters, in general.

Sundance Film Review: ‘Morris From America’