The first trailer for Till, Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu’s movie about the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, shows his mother Mamie Till Mobley warning her son about danger during his life, and then fighting for justice after his murder.
“The lynching of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all,” Till’s mother, played by The Harder They Fall’s Danielle Deadwyler, says at one point in the trailer.
Chukwu’s feature will also have a world premiere at the New York Film Festival on its opening weekend, with the film’s cast and producers at the launch.
Till, set for a release by MGM’s Orion Pictures to select theaters on Oct. 14, followed by a nationwide release on Oct. 28, covers Mobley’s insistence on an open casket funeral, which became a galvanizing moment that helped lead to the creation of the civil rights movement.
“No, they have to see it for themselves,” Mobley tells a funeral director who wants to dress her son’s wounds.
Till is written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu. The ensemble cast includes Deadwyler, Whoopi Goldberg, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Kevin Carroll, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Haley Bennett.
The story for Till is based on the research conducted by documentarian Keith Beauchamp, and his relationship with Mamie Till Mobley and Emmett Till’s cousin, Simeon Wright who was an eyewitness to the kidnapping of Till and who served as a consultant to the project before his death in 2017. For more than 27 years, Beauchamp has investigated the kidnapping, torture and murder of Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman, eventually getting United States Department of Justice to reopen the case in 2004.
“I’m incredibly proud and excited to premiere my film Till at the 60th New York Film Festival. As a filmmaker, to be embraced by NYFF for this particular feature and to have the opportunity to screen Till for youth nationwide is exhilarating,” Chukwu said of his film’s debut at NYFF in a statement.