Why Moonlight is the Must-See Film of the Year

By Gina Duncan, JBFC director of industry engagement and special programs 

I don’t know what I can say about Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight that every major publication and respected film critic hasn’t said already. To quote several sources, Moonlight is a “lyrical” “astonishing” “beautifully humane” “masterpiece” and “the reason we go to the movies[.]” (I know critics can be unreliable, but trust me, in this instance, everything they’re saying is true.) Going to see this film is not an obligation but a privilege. It is a rare piece of cinematic art in which every frame, every action, every song—on a soundtrack you’re definitely going to want to buy—oozes the love and tenderness and passion Jenkins poured into it. And then there is this: “Black” films and “LGBT” films are frequently marginalized, yet here comes Barry Jenkins, a black man, only 36 years old with one feature under his belt, with the audacity to shove these two hot potatoes together and (and this is really incredible) get it financed, cast, and made. [record scratch] SAY WHAT?! The behind-the-scenes extra on the film’s eventual DVD should be titled Mission: Impossible. If the Oscars gave out an award for Persistence in the Face of Adversity, Barry would win it (though I think we’ll see him getting a different award that night).

Jonathan Demme and I had a lot of different reasons why we wanted to start the Remix film series. But our main goal was to introduce the JBFC audience to a world of artfully-crafted films that depicted the diversity of the black experience in America and abroad. What I love about this film and Jenkins’s first feature, Medicine for Melancholy, is his “ability to capture black folks in their ordinariness, without making statements or declarations,”(Ta-Nehisi Coates). And so I am back to where I started, I don’t know what to say about this film that others haven’t stated or declared, that will make you, dear reader, any more inclined to see this powerful, hopeful, beautiful work of art. It will leave you speechless, but that’s ok, because Moonlight speaks volumes for itself.

Moonlight opens at the JBFC on Friday, Oct. 28 as a Westchester Exclusive. Tickets are on sale here. 

See the film then view the full JBFC Q&A with filmmaker Barry Jenkins, writer Tarell Alvin McCraney, and moderator Darnell Moore.