Chinonye Chukwu was certain of two things setting out to tell the story of a loving and lovely 14-year-old boy lynched in 1955 Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. First, the story had to be…
. “Narratively speaking, since we are following Mamie’s journey, it is not necessary to see that physical violence. We have to stay with Mamie.”So Till’s violent murder is heard, but not seen. “Where the camera focuses is its own act of resistance. So I was very intentional about who we see and when,” she said.
Mamie held Emmett’s funeral with an open casket, his brutalized body shocking the country into a reckoning. Awash in grief and resistant at first, she gradually accepts the role thrust upon her by her son’s death — a crusader for social justice.