Joe Biden Praises ‘Till’ At White House Screening Today; “With Truth Comes Healing & Justice,” POTUS Says During Black History Month Event
deadline.comThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may have appallingly snubbed Till this year when it came to Oscar nominations, but the President of the United States today had nothing but accolades for the Chinonye Chukwu directed film about the 1955 lynching of civil rights activist teenage Emmett by racists and his mother’s relentless fight for justice. “To everyone involved in this film, to paraphrase Maya Angelou: People will never forget how you make them feel,” Joe Biden said Thursday before the Till screening at the White House. “People will never forget how you make them feel,” the President added. “You know, you have that artist’s gifts of making us feel our common humanity.” Based on the horrific events of Emmett Till’s death in Mississippi almost 70 years ago, and the determination of Mamie Till-Mobley to literally open her son’s casket at his Chicago funeral and shine a literal spotlight for the whole world to see on the pain and trauma he suffered in his fatal quest for equality, Till was released last October in cinemas.
The film from Orion Pictures, MGM Pictures and United Artists Releasing stars Danielle Deadwyler as Till-Mobley and Jalyn Hall as Emmett.
Director Chukwu co-wrote the powerful script with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp. Chukwu, Deadwyle, Hall, Reilly, and Beauchamp were all in attendance today for the Black History Month celebrating East Room screening.
Also there with “the family of Emmett Till, students, civil rights leaders, historians and families of victims of hate-fueled violence,” as the White House said earlier this week, were Whoopi Goldberg, who played Alma Carthan, Mamie’s mother and Emmett’s grandmother in the film and is a producer, as well as fellow Till producers
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