Moonlight by Barry Jenkins
Writer(s): Barry Jenkins, Tarell McCarney
Cast: Janelle Monáe, Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris
Awards:
Winner, Best Picture, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Barry Jenkins
Winner, Best Director, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Barry Jenkins
Winner, Best Cinematography, Los Angeles Film Critics Association
Nominee, Best Picture – Drama, Golden Globes, Barry Jenkins
Nominee, Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globes, Naomie Harris
Nominee, Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globes, Mahershala Ali
Nominee, Best Director, Golden Globes, Barry Jenkins
Nominee, Best Screenplay, Golden Globes, Barry Jenkins
Nominee, Best Original Score, Golden Globes
From writer/director Barry Jenkins and starring Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, Andre Holland, and Mahershala Ali.
MOONLIGHT –
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Barry Jenkins
CAST: Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, Andre Holland, and Mahershala Ali
Synopsis
A young man deals with his dysfunctional home life and comes of age in Miami during the “War on Drugs” era. The story of his struggle to find himself is told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love while grappling with his own sexuality.
How Barry Jenkins Turned the Misery and Beauty of the Queer Black Experience Into the Year’s Best Movie By Greg Tate
“Black American culture has cultivated a tendency to flourish in the face of tragedy; grinding lemonade out of strange fruit has been a staple practice for radical renewal since we got dragged here. So much so that nobody blinks when even our billion-dollar pop idols fall into protean, resistant formation.”
Critic reviews
“To describe “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’s second feature, as a movie about growing up poor, black and gay would be accurate enough. It would also not be wrong to call it a movie about drug abuse, mass incarceration and school violence. But those classifications are also inadequate, so much as to be downright misleading. It would be truer to the mood and spirit of this breathtaking film to say that it’s about teaching a child to swim, about cooking a meal for an old friend, about the feeling of sand on skin and the sound of waves on a darkened beach, about first kisses and lingering regrets. Based on the play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by Tarell Alvin McCraney, “Moonlight” is both a disarmingly, at times almost unbearably personal film and an urgent social document, a hard look at American reality and a poem written in light, music and vivid human faces.” “Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Moonlight is its open-endedness, its resistance to easy summary or categorization.” A. O. Scott The NYTimes
“Barry Jenkins’s new film somehow manages to feel grand and intricate in the same moment, weaving random memories and crucial life experiences into a gripping tapestry.” “Like all great films, Moonlight is both specific and sweeping. It’s a story about identity—an intelligent, challenging work that wants viewers to reflect on assumptions they might make about the characters. It’s also a focused and personal work, a mental odyssey about the youth, adolescence, and adulthood of Chiron, who is growing up gay and black in Miami. From start to finish, the director Barry Jenkins’s new film balances the scope of its ambitions: The story weaves random memories and crucial life experiences into a tapestry, one that tries to unlock the shielded heart of its protagonist.” David Sims, The Atlantic
Barry Jenkins of ‘Moonlight’: “I’m My Best Self on a Film Set” | Close Up With THR
