Breaking Baz at TIFF: ’American Fiction’s Debut Filmmaker Cord Jefferson Donated A Kidney To His Father – And Made One Of The Year’s Best Movies
14.09.2023 - 00:37
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Cord Jefferson has, in recent years, made two life-changing decisions.
In 2008, he donated a kidney to his father.
“That was easy,” he said.
“That was one of the easiest decisions I ever made. I mean, he gave me life. I feel like the kidney’s half his,” the 41-year-old declared.
A few years later, Jefferson read novelist Percival Everett’s book Erasure.
Then he adapted it for the big screen and called it American Fiction. The project became his feature film directorial debut.
The searingly provocative movie had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and has emerged as one of the best films of the year, joining the handful of movies that have so far galvanized the fall festivals at Venice, Telluride and Toronto.
Orion Pictures releases American Fiction in select theaters November 3, expanding it November 17.
To my shame, American Fiction had not registered in my mind when I gave this year’s TIFF titles a cursory glance when the films were announced.
RELATED: TIFF 2023 Has 50 Acquirable Films & Few Stars To Promote Them; Will Hungry Distributors Pounce?
Jefferson’s reps at Rogers & Cowan/PMK sent me a note last week pitching Jefferson as a possible candidate for an interview.
They’re good people, but I was wary.
Jefferson is Black, and I bristle, ever so slightly — but not in every instance — whenever a new Black artist comes along and people want me to meet them.
Why have they come to me?
I’m damning myself here because it’s pertinent to the topic that underpins American Fiction.
The movie subverts the white lens and satirizes how my Caucasian brothers and sisters react to Black culture; in this case publishing, and the motion picture industry, too.
The stereotypical cultural tropes we