In “My Nephew Emmett,” director Kevin Wilson Jr. takes a look at the less publicized, but crucial point of view of Moses “Mose” Wright (L.B. Williams), uncle of Emmett Till (Joshua Wright), the teenager from Chicago whose 1955 lynching helped push the Civil Rights Movement into motion. The short film relies heavily on closeups of Wright, whose stunning, subtle performance carries the film, and on the countryside’s natural soundtrack, with crickets and other noises of the night painting a deceptively peaceful picture while Wright waits helplessly for the horrors that still plague this country to take place.
The tension builds with Wright’s dread, as the clock slowly ticks to the moment his nephew is taken away to be beaten, mutilated, terrorized, and ultimately shot for allegedly whistling at a white woman. As Wright bathes, waiting for the inevitable, he immerses himself in water in a scene reminiscent of another gorgeous movie, similarly built on closeups and starring a black man: “Moonlight.” But where Chiron’s submersion is liberating, Wright’s is harrowingly suffocating: sounds of an underwater struggle play over his submersion, perhaps in an attempt to reflect Wright’s agony as to what he know will inevitably happen, or even more disturbingly, to call to Emmett Till’s own drowning, as the 14-year-old boy’s body was ultimately thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
Both Wright’s and the audience’s foreboding painfully manifests itself in the downturn of Wright’s lips, in the bulge of his eyes as sleep eludes him, in the veins that strain across his face as he waits for the moment we all know is coming. Despite the film’s weak ending—Wilson Jr. inserts actual footage of Wright’s interview the day he identified his nephew’s body, possibly to cement the story as a real man’s experience, but inadvertently takes away from Williams’ beautiful performance—the film stands as tall as Wright, thanks to Williams.
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The Silent Child
Dir. Chris Overton
Disabilities deserve to be recognized, but they are not inherent hindrances. First-time screenwriter Rachel Shenton makes this message clear in the film, “The Silent Child.” Shenton plays social worker Joanne, who is brought in to help Libby, a four-year-old girl who is completely deaf. As Libby’s mother insists the girl learn speech therapy over sign language to integrate her into school, Joanne soon realises Libby is a child silenced not by her disability, but by her family. Her siblings are too busy with their own lives to interact with Libby, and her parents speak to her as if she can hear.
What then unfolds between Joanne and Libby is more than a mentor-mentee relationship. “Jo” becomes her only sympathetic and patient friend. Six-year-old Maisie Sly, who plays Libby and is deaf in real life, speaks beyond sign language. Her facial expressions, from blank stares to shy laughter, capture her journey as she learns to sign. The cinematography is striking in its bleakness. Jo travels by bike, lending room to panoramic shots of the foggy, rural landscape, which briefly glimmers under the sun when Libby is briefly allowed to communicate for herself.
The film ends with sobering facts about the experience of deaf children: “Over 78 percent of deaf children attend mainstream school with no specialist support in place.” Shenton hopes that “this film contributes in the fight for sign language to be recognized in every school across the globe.” Even so, “The Silent Child” isn’t preachy or aggressive—Shenton has successfully created a powerful yet subtle message with her simple storyline.
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Watu Wote: All of Us
Dir. Katja Benrath
“The region between Kenya and Somalia is considered highly dangerous. In recent years Christians have repeatedly been attacked by Al-Shabaab terrorists,” on-screen text explains. Jua (Adelyne Wairimu), the film’s protagonist, is one such Christian. Having lost her baby and her husband to the aforementioned terrorism, she alienates all Muslims, including those who do not share the same extremist views as the Al-Shabaab terrorists. In line with the unofficial theme for many of this year’s nominated live-action short films, “Watu Wote” is also based on a true story: On a bus ride back to visit her sick mother—and the place where her husband and child were killed—Jua finds herself in the midst of a terrorist attack. The terrorists stop the bus and demand for all Christians to be separated from the Muslims. The threat is clear: They intend to kill the Christians, and the Muslims who would protect them, which turns out to be all of them. Jua is saved when her neighbor, a Muslim mother, quickly throws a hijab onto her head to hide her identity. Even Salah Farah (Abdiwali Farrah), a Muslim teacher toward whom Jua was initially volatile, questions the terrorists and their actions, protecting the Christian passengers from an undeserved fate.
The film depicts different people coming together to protect themselves, even at the risk of their own life. But, though poignant and timely, the film fails to convey what should have been a powerful message about unity and the rejection of bigotry, as Jua wanders away as she reaches her final destination to greet what we can assume is her family without coming to terms with what happened or the sacrifices people made to protect her.
—Staff writer Mila Gauvin II can be reached at mila.gauvin@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Kaylee S. Kim can be reached at kaylee.kim@thecrimson.com.