Exhibiting Forgiveness

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Titus Kaphar creates a strong emotional drama with strong themes, writing, and a wonderful performance from Andre Holland. Holland's performance was amazing as his performance created an good essence and personality to his character which felt purposeful and insightful. Including the rest of the performances from the other cast members. Kaphar's direction and writing provides interesting themes of forgiveness, estranged family relationship, art, generational trauma, and healing from the Black community and each of the themes were handled gracefully and were well-executed.

Many of the dialogue moments were strong as each dialogue from the characters felt real and raw. I really connected with Holland's character as I felt emotionally invested and pretty bad for him throughout. Having known peers who have similar lives to Holland's character, made the movie more powerful and compelling. Forgiveness can be messy and Kaphar perfectly demonstrates how tough, messy and emotional forgiveness can be.

The production designs, camerawork, and the soundtrack choices are wonderful. The pacing does have some slow moments but it didn't ruin the experience. Overall, strong debut from Titus Kaphar and I look forward to see what Kaphar has next.