After making several 'short' movies, director Justin Simien presents his feature length debut, the funny and sassy 'Dear White People', which he also wrote, with an assured confidence and definitely with a voice not heard too often in cinema. Its arrival at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year resulted in this small independent movie winning the Special Jury Award, and you can see why it did so. As a 30 year old African American film maker who had seen too many stereotypical roles for people of colour on screen, Simien set about putting together a film, albeit a comedy, about the situation of race, especially among the young of America. Who fits in where? How should people view other people? He has written a script that pulls no punches, yet covers so much of the hard facts with humour. The (mainly) young cast rise to the challenge of bringing the subtle textures needed to make this work. On the surface it may look like another broad based 'black comedy', however the questions raised from the story shines a light on everybody involved, whatever colour they are.
At the beginning of the film we find ourselves at a fictional Ivy League place of higher learning, the prestigious sounding Winchester University. Here we find several interesting black students trying to find their role within the system. These include the geeky looking, huge Afro wearing Lionel, who happens to be gay and a Mumford & Sons fan, played with great deadpan flavour by Tyler James Williams (better known as playing Chris in the Chris Rock TV comedy 'Everybody Hates Chris'). Then there is the mixed race, militant, fiery Samantha (Tessa Thompson) who leads the charge for her black brothers and sisters, yet has her own personal identity issues. Dark skinned Coco (Teyonah Parris) refuses to be labelled as ''yet another sista from the 'hood' and tries desparately to hide the fact she is from the South side of Chicago. Troy (Brandon P Bell) sees himself as the 'smooth, cool dude' whose success is pretty much a done deal, especially with his father (TV '24''s Dennis Haysbert) is the Dean at Winchester. However, even he feels as if he has a 'role' to play in order to get ahead.
At the beginning of the film we find ourselves at a fictional Ivy League place of higher learning, the prestigious sounding Winchester University. Here we find several interesting black students trying to find their role within the system. These include the geeky looking, huge Afro wearing Lionel, who happens to be gay and a Mumford & Sons fan, played with great deadpan flavour by Tyler James Williams (better known as playing Chris in the Chris Rock TV comedy 'Everybody Hates Chris'). Then there is the mixed race, militant, fiery Samantha (Tessa Thompson) who leads the charge for her black brothers and sisters, yet has her own personal identity issues. Dark skinned Coco (Teyonah Parris) refuses to be labelled as ''yet another sista from the 'hood' and tries desparately to hide the fact she is from the South side of Chicago. Troy (Brandon P Bell) sees himself as the 'smooth, cool dude' whose success is pretty much a done deal, especially with his father (TV '24''s Dennis Haysbert) is the Dean at Winchester. However, even he feels as if he has a 'role' to play in order to get ahead.
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