1st Look: Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us

Hopefully, I’ll be able to bring a series of these right up until the festival actually begins. We begin with a project that has been listed in our database for a while now. Workshopped in the Sundance labs, written and directed by Tanya Hamilton, and announced as part of the U.S Dramatic Competition, formerly titled “Stringbean and Marcus”, Night Catches Us is set in 1978 and focuses on the broken love affair between two former Black Panther members and is told through the eyes of an adolescent girl.

Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Pat (Kerry Washington), who reignite a love affair when Marcus returns home after a decade in exile. Pat’s ten-year-old daughter Iris (newcomer Jamara Griffin) at first rejects Marcus’ return, but soon discovers a kindred spirit in a man who can fill in the missing pieces of her family history. 

This peace is threatened by a triangle of opposing forces: local Panther leader Do-Right (Jamie Hector), who wants to settle past debts with Marcus; Detective Gordon (Wendell Pierce), who tries to blackmail him; and Jimmy (Amari Cheatom), a troubled client of Pat’s pro bono law practice, who takes a twisted idea of Panther justice into his own hands. The community is thrown into chaos, as racial conflict explodes and Marcus is forced to confront the truth about what had kept him on the run for so many years. Jamara Griffin obviously plays a pivotal role in the drama.

Mackie and Washington both appeared in Spike Lee’s She Hate Me.