Steven Silver is the title character in The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, which is sort of like a mashup of The Hate You Give with Groundhog Day (with maybe a dash of Moonlight added in). Tunde Johnson is a gay black student, who endures a variety of violent deaths at the hands of police as he relives the same day over and over. He comes out to his parents, and struggles to convince his boyfriend to stop hiding who he is as well. Silver gives a great performance in the lead role, showing honesty, strength and vulnerability. At times we are not sure if what we are seeing is real or his hallucination.
I liked the film and found it powerful, especially the way the repeated killing scenes were shown from different perspectives. But some parts of the film did not work for me. I'm not a fan of rap, and the music/soundtrack was loud and noisy and disturbing at times. I also felt that Tunde's friendship with Marley, a stuck-up girl who cared more about appearances than what was real, did not make any sense at all, and that made a big part of the film fail for me. And near the end I started wondering where the story was going.
Stanley Kulu wrote the screenplay at age 19, and it won a screenwriting contest that had more than 500 entries. It's a different look at a dark and important subject, and it treats it with a sense of hope.
TIFF 2019 Overview
I'm no fan of rap either. I call it Rap Crap to my kids.
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