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TILL (2022, USA) – 8/10

Another harrowing and shocking, but exceptionally high-quality drama comes to us from the American South and reminds us of not so long ago when it was dangerous to have a slightly darker skin color. “Till” was filmed based on true events from the mid-fifties when a group of whites lynched and killed a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who came to visit relatives in Mississippi over the summer. Young Emmett grew up in Chicago, where racism was not so pronounced even then, and although he was aware that in the South the circumstances were significantly different, he probably could not even imagine that something completely harmless could cost him his head. And while in Chicago for screwing up a pretty white lady, at worst he would receive a few educational slaps, in Money, Mississippi, such a misdemeanor will, unfortunately, be far more seriously sanctioned.

A group of white supremacists, dredges not far removed from their slave-era ancestors, are just going to break into Emmett’s relatives’ house during the night, pick up the boy, and no one will see him alive again. They will find the boy a few days later mutilated and brutalized in some ditch, and he will be sent to his mother in Chicago. Although Emmett Louis Till was not the only black boy to end so gruesomely, his case is one of the most famous as his mother Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler) then turned into a human rights activist, and what she did cut deep into awareness of the American public and vividly depicted what was happening.

And the Nigerian-American filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu, who introduced herself a few years earlier with the solid drama “Clemency”, decided to tell this tragic historical drama from the perspective of a mother who lost her only child in such a brutal and cruel way. And the great “Till” shows the time and circumstances that reigned in the American South at that time and the incredible absurdity of the situation in which blacks were relatively safe in most of the USA, while in the South they were still persecuted almost as during slavery. The not too well-known actress Deadwyler is truly excellent as Mamie Till and brilliantly she conveys the expression of sadness, anger, despair, but also feelings of guilt that she will try to channel into efforts to change something.

But, as we well know, it will not be so easy and we will see here too how some habits are very difficult to change and how both Mamie and people from the human rights movement are aware that those responsible will probably never be held accountable for what has been done. The system is on their side, they feel untouchable because they assume there is no judge in the south who will convict a white man for crimes against blacks. We also see that the blacks from the south are in mortal fear of saying something against the whites because they are aware that they themselves could very easily end up like the unfortunate boy. This was a quality historical drama, a shocking and poignant story about another in a series of shameful episodes from the history of the USA.

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