“American Fiction” has quickly become the movie to watch in the awards season after it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim, garnering the festival’s People’s Choice Award. The award has come to be seen as a precursor for Academy Award nominations. Since its inception in 1978, 42 TIFF People’s Choice Award winners have gone on to be nominated for a Best Picture or Best International Picture Academy Award, with 17 taking home a statue. The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood described the movie as relevant, insightful, and “very, very funny.”
The directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, “American Fiction,” is a satire of the literary scene and the treatment of black identity in society. The movie stars Jeffrey Wright as “Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a writer thrown into an emotional crisis when his latest novel is described as “not black enough.” In frustration, he writes a novel filled with every possible cliché of black life in an inner city and has it published under a pseudonym. To his chagrin, the novel becomes a runaway bestseller.
“American Fiction” also co-stars Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Keith David, Issa Rae, and Sterling K. Brown.
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Here’s the official synopsis:
AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.
“American Fiction” will premiere on December 15, with an expansion on December 22 via Orion Pictures and MGM, just in time for Oscar season. Watch the first trailer below.
