Y’know, sometimes movies have to give you a little bit more than a smile
IN THE LATE 1990S, when the idea of a film about the lynching of Emmett Till was first floated, the woman who would eventually direct it was in high school. Chinonye Chukwu was a daylight-deprived Alaskan teenager obsessed with Julia Roberts romcoms.
“Obsessed. She had the back-to-back trifecta: Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, My Best Friend’s Wedding,” says the 37-year-old, as she pours herself a cup of herbal tea in her London hotel room. “I would rewrite the film’s story in my journal, and either make myself the protagonist, or somebody else who looked like me … It was my escape, y’know?”
What Chukwu sought escape from was her “identity crises, as a Black girl growing up in Alaska, trying to find my place in the world”. Her parents were petroleum engineers from Nigeria, who had moved to the
