Directed by Chinonye Chukwu with a screenplay by Michael Reilly & Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, Till tells the heartbreaking true story of the historical lynching of 15-year-old Emmett Till — for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 — through the eyes of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. This is what makes the film so compelling. It’s told through the perspective and experience of a Black woman and is co-written and directed by a Black woman.
Mamie Till-Mobley is a widowed single mother who is the head of her household, the only Black woman working for the Air Force in Chicago, who simply wants a better life for her son. Till-Mobley becomes a revolutionary by insisting that the world witnessed the horror of her brutally maimed son’s body in an open casket, viewing it as an act of defiance against oppression and hate. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy,” she said at the time. Till-Mobley also gave the exclusive rights to Jet Magazine to publish the images of her son’s maimed body, which caused the lynching to gain worldwide notoriety. A mother’s audacity became a lightning rod in the Civil Rights Movement and propelled her to reluctantly become an outspoken activist for the NAACP, advocating for social justice and education.
Till-Mobley represents many phenomenal Black women in American history who are heroes (often hidden figures) for demanding justice, refusing to shrink in a horrific moment of racial/social injustice, and turning profound trauma into triumph in the continuing fight for civil rights, equality, and humanity.
The actors in TILL bring this socially conscious film to life with passion and deep emotion. Danielle Deadwyler’s portrayal of Till-Mobley is defiant and charismatic. Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Till- Mobley’s mother, Alma Carthan (and serves as a film producer), is both complicated and vulnerable as the family’s matriarch negotiating traditional Southern racist practices and modern Northern quests for Black liberation and feminism. Jalyn Hall, as Emmett Till, is jovial with childlike innocence. While brief, Roger Guenveur Smith’s role as Dr. T.R.M. Howard is memorable and commanding. Haley Bennett (Carolyn Bryant), Jayme Lawson (Myrlie Evers), and Tosin Cole (Medgar Evers) all transport you back to the racially charged history of 1955. TILL is a modern-day masterpiece shining a light on an important American story that has been hidden from the public and education system.
