Deep into the summer and looking ahead at the fall film festivals, this is also the time of year where those films that debuted at Sundance in the winter begin to arrive in theaters. And that means audiences will finally get the chance to watch some of the best the early festivals have to offer and see some of the surprising films that caught the eye of critics in January. One of those films is “The Last Tree.”
As seen in the trailer for “The Last Tree,” which premiered at Sundance, we see that the beautiful, emotionally-charged film follows the story of Femi, a young British boy of Nigerian heritage, who is being raised in foster care by a white woman. Things change when he’s taken back into custody by his birth mother and he goes from the affluent suburbs to the inner city. From there, Femi has to come to terms with his new life, his new family structure, and his own identity.
We were lucky enough to see “The Last Tree” when it debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In our review, we said, “It’s a film that challenges the norm by breaking away from what’s expected. Whether it fully succeeds or not, any work of art that showcases this much passion and effort deserves recognition, and ‘The Last Tree’ deserves all the attention it can muster.”
The film stars Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, and Nicholas Pinnock. “The Last Tree” is directed by Shola Amoo, who previously wrote and helmed the feature “A Moving Image.”
“The Last Tree” is set to debut in UK cinemas on September 20. A US release has yet to be announced.
Here’s the synopsis:
The Last Tree is the semi-autobiographical story of Femi, a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after being fostered in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner-city London to live with his birth mother. In his teens, Femi is struggling with the culture and values of his new environment. Femi must decide which path to adulthood he wants to take, and what it means to be a young black man in London during the early 00s.