Pass Over

Director: Spike Lee
Screenwriters: Antoinette Nwandu

Institute History

  • 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Moses and Kitch, two young black men, chat their way through a long, aimless day on a Chicago street corner. Periodically ducking bullets and managing visits from a genial but ominous stranger and an overtly hostile police officer, Moses and Kitch rely on their poetic, funny, at times profane banter to get them through a day that is a hopeless retread of every other day, even as they continue to dream of their deliverance.

Playwright Antoinette Nwandu’s politically charged Pass Over riffs on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, transporting the classic play’s story framework to a contemporary Chicago setting and boldly creating her own specific, timely, and provocative work bursting with passion and poetry. Director Spike Lee (a Sundance Film Festival alum nine times over) channels Danya Taymor’s onstage direction into his spirited cinematographic capturing of the work, recorded on the Steppenwolf Theatre stage. Jon Michael Hill and Julian Parker deliver captivating performances, balancing ferocity and humor as they devastatingly illustrate this particular human condition.

— H.Z.

Screening Details

Credits

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