With a major last 12 months, starring in half a dozen films and receiving an Oscar nomination, Colman Domingo’s best performance of the bunch is in Greg Kwedar’s drama Sing Sing. A TIFF premiere that was picked up by A24 for a release this July, the film follows a theater troupe that finds escape from the realities of incarceration through the creativity of putting on a play. Based on a real-life rehabilitation program and featuring a cast that includes formerly incarcerated actors, the first trailer has now arrived ahead of its SXSW U.S. premiere.
I said in my TIFF review, “Reminiscent of Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous’ piercing Folsom Prison therapy program documentary The Work, Sing Sing is most interested in the rediscovering of a soul’s humanity after years of presenting a veneer of socially conditioned callousness perpetrated by both the system that was the reason for incarceration in the first place and an even more grueling code of kill-or-be-killed living in jail. Best exemplifying this transformation is Divine Eye (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, in a breakthrough performance) whom program founder Divine G (Domingo) cautiously approaches in the yard after observing some of the best acting he’s ever seen when demanding repayment for a drug deal gone wrong. Divine Eye reluctantly appears at an initial session and much of the film’s most poignant dramatic tension is found in his blossoming personality and newfound creative freedom as an outlet for decades of pain. Leading the group as theater director Brent, Raci gives another grounded turn following Sound of Metal as a man whose seemingly seen his fair share of pain and now is intently focused on bringing the best out of everyone he has the pleasure of guiding.”
See the trailer below.
Sing Sing opens in July.