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Actors Y’Lan Noel and Cleopatra Coleman have been tapped as the leads for actor Mo McRae’s directorial debut, A Lot of Nothing. The film has David Oyelowo attached as an executive producer.

The description: A married couple living in a Los Angeles suburb is compelled to take dangerous actions when they discover their next-door neighbor is the police officer that just murdered an unarmed motorist.

The script was written by McRae and Sarah Kelly Kaplan. The film is set to begin filming next month. The film is produced by Anonymous Content and Mansa Productions. The latter is coming off the Sundance acclaim and sale of Nine Days, which stars Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz.

Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz appear in Nine Days by Edson Oda, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Wyatt Garfield.rrAll photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or ‘Courtesy of Sundance Institute.’ Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz appear in Nine Days by Edson Oda, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Wyatt Garfield.rrAll photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or ‘Courtesy of Sundance Institute.’ Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

We are born, we live, and we die. Before we can get on that particular merry-go-round, however, we must first be interviewed. The interrogator is tall, quiet, fastidious, well-dressed. Small granny spectacles perch on his nose as he asks questions of those who sit before him. And when he’s not doing that, he’s reviewing former “vacancies” that he’s filled, watching on a bank of monitors displaying numerous lives in progress. If we are lucky, we are chosen to go forth, from cradle to grave. If not, perhaps the man will do what he can to give us one fleeting moment of happiness before we disappear into the ether.

This is the premise of Nine Days, Edson Oda’s odd, affecting portrait of a prelife purgatory, and half of a serious one-two U.S. Dramatic Competition punch that Sundance unleashed on attendees late in the game. In terms of the narrative features, the festival’s first weekend trotted out some interesting, chatter-inducing titles — notably Zola, Janicza Bravo’s adaptation of an epic Twitter thread involving strippers, pimps, and Florida (for context, see this Rolling Stone article), and Shirley, a sort of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style psychodrama that features an inspired turn by Elisabeth Moss as horror author Shirley Jackson. There was also the quietly devastating Never Sometimes Rarely Always, Eliza Hittman’s teen-pregnancy tale that left folks slightly shell shocked, and the manic glee of the Andy Samberg/Cristin Milioti rom-com Palm Springs (which broke the previous Sundance sales record by 69 cents.) But fiction-wise, there was nothing that made you feel wowed, as if you’d stumbled out of the theater a slightly different person than when you’d walked in — the 2020 edition’s equivalent of last year’s The Farewell, or The Souvenir, or The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

Then, just like that, midweek salvation arrived in the form of Oda’s timeless, existential whatsit and Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a Reagan-era family drama about dislocation, determination, and the meaning of the American dream. Each were familiar enough to fall within two respective, recognizable Sundance categories — high-concept, low-fidelity quirk, and the coming-of-age story. Each were somewhat delicate, and took their time in crafting a cumulative emotional weight without feeling needlessly withholding. And more important, like last year’s three standouts, each restored a sort of faith in the more modest types of films that play among the splashier star-driven projects and scrappier, seat-of-the-pants microbudget calling cards that often dominate in Park City. They are “small” movies that leave big waves in their wake.

First, the prelude-to-humanity parable. A cross between a Gondry-esque chin-stroker and a Zen Buddhist tweak on The Good Place, Nine Days — so named for the length it takes to choose a candidate for birth — has its share of near-twee tics. Will, the stoic gent who’s one of this limbo’s selectors, dresses like an uptight Amish metaphysics professor. (He’s played by Us/Black Panther star Winston Duke, who proves he’s as adept at art-house minimalism as he is at horror/Marvel movie maximalism.) His headquarters is a throwback Craftsman house in the middle of a literal nowhere, and he watches his former picks go about their lives via vintage home-entertainment equipment and videotapes. Before a life begins, it’s represented by color bars and a test-pattern whistle. Last-wish requests turn into arts-and-crafts projects involving fake beach scenes, movie screens, stationary cycles, jaunty music, teary cheeks.

Yet what might seem, at first sneer, like just a hipster’s notion of eternity as an artisanal, analog-tech ghost town, eventually reveals a deeper purpose, and a determination to move past any too-cool-for-film-school superficiality. A Japanese Brazilian filmmaker with a background in commercials, Oda is taking big philosophical swings with his debut: What are the nature of souls? Is a life something to be earned, rather than gifted? Does the beauty of being human outweigh the pain of existence, or do these two elements symbiotically feed off each other, yin to yang? Who are we, before we are anything at all? Having been shaken by seeing a former case study die in a car crash, Will has begun questioning the nature of his endeavor as he and his assistant (Benedict Wong) run through a new batch of candidates, some of whom are played by Tony Hale (funny), Bill Skarsgård (freaky), and Zazie Beetz (fabulous). The latter, in particular, keeps lobbing queries back at the interviewer, forcing him to engage in a way he’d usually rather not. Not to mention the fact that Will is one of the few in this vaguely pastoral purgatory to have actually been on Earth, an experience that still weighs on him.

It’s heavy, heady stuff, coming at you via a delivery system of catalog-worthy set design, magic-hour cinematography, and often tamped-down, deadpan performances. And somehow, it all works in harmony to create a ripple effect of feeling that reverberates strongly under its placid surfaces. (The closest thing Nine Days resembles isn’t something like, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so much as Columbus, a quiet Sundance alumnus from 2017 that also trafficked in form-and-content exteriors and interior musings.) There were some critics at the fest who felt that the film doesn’t stick the landing, but in a movie that doles out its outbursts very selectively, the display of sound and fury indeed signifies something. The fact that, as of [checks calendar] day nine of Sundance, Oda’s extraordinary, sideways take on life, the universe, and everything remains without distribution should be rectified immediately. It deserves a chance at a life filled with bigger audiences outside of a critic’s snowy festival bubble.

Minari has already secured a patron saint — A24, the current standard-bearers of boutique-label cinema, brought it to the festival. And unlike Nine Days, it arrived with a sense of pedigree: writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s first film, Munyurangabo, about two Rwandan youth, made a huge splash after debuting at Cannes in 2007. His output has been spotty since then, but this semi-autobiographical look at a Korean American family moving to Arkansas in the Eighties couldn’t be more on-point. A beautiful example of cinema à clef done with little blustery sentimentality and a surfeit of grace notes, it’s a textbook example of why that-summer-changed-everything movies are less about the tale than how it’s told.

Chung’s screen counterpart is seven-year-old David (Alan Kim), who’s been uprooted from California by his dad (Burning’s Steven Yeun) and relocated to the Natural State. Pops is chasing the dream of starting a farm in order to cultivate Korean vegetables; there’s a growing diaspora in nearby Southern regions, he reasons, and thus a growing market for fresh produce that caters to homesick immigrants. David’s older sister (Noel Kate Cho) rolls with the changes when she’s not eye-rolling her family; Mom (Yeri Han) is harboring resentment over the move and what she perceives is her husband’s selfish folly. Why couldn’t they have stayed out West? He wants 50 acres of good American dirt (“Five acres is a hobby,” the father reasons) and the chance to make something of himself. Obstacles — some external, many more internal — loom on the horizon.

You think you know where all of this is going — and in a way, you do, given that Minari is definitely one of those films in which the complexities of a first-person past is replayed through the eyes of a child. The parental arguing, the appearance of David’s kindly grandmother (Yuh-Jung Youn) who’s come to stay with them (“She smells like Korea,” the boy complains), the fish-outta-water experience that’s compounded by the family’s immigrant status: we see all of this through our underage hero’s perspective, even as Chung’s wisdom and wistfulness informs this look back at his childhood. But the film has a habit of gently leaning left when you expect things to swerve right, from the casual racism that quickly defuses itself to the way the elderly relative becomes a co-conspirator instead of an Old World taskmaster. There’s not a false note in any of the performances, though it’s tempting to single out Kim (he’s an astounding performer with a killer blank-reaction face) and Han, who never lets the mother devolve into the cliché of a long-suffering spouse. (Kudos to the great Will Patton, blessing us with a humanistic portrait of the town’s Jesus freak.) Even when the grandmother character threatens to turn into a cute-biddy caricature, the film has a way of pulling things back from the brink of cloying.

When things take a turn for the tragic, you brace for the worst. And still, Chung presents things in a manner that punctures the melodrama without lessening the moments’ impact. In a festival that prizes personal visions and voices, Minari understands exactly how to blend the specific and the universal — that combination of making his story feel like yours. The title, by the way, refers to a plant used in a number of Korean dishes; Grandma brings over seeds from the homeland when she comes to stay with the family. She and David plant them by a creek a short walk from the farm. They can grow virtually anywhere, she tells the boy. And yet the leafy green still retains its native characteristics. Yes, it’s a metaphor. Yes, the film earns using it.

EXCLUSIVE: Following in the footsteps of fellow ballers like Kobe Bryant (Kobe Studios), Lebron James (SpringHill Entertainment), and Stephen Curry (Unanimous Media), NBA All-Star and Dwight Howard is getting into the film business. The Washington Wizards center, via Mansa Productions, has come aboard as an executive producer of Percy, an anti-GMO indie film starring Oscar-winner Christopher Walken, Christina Ricci, and Zach Braff.

Grasshopper + Marks Productions (Brewmaster) has also signed on as exec producers of the film, which is being directed by Clark Johnson.

Written by Hilary Pryor and Garfield L. Miller, the plot follows a small-town Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser (Walken) who challenges a major conglomerate when the company’s genetically modified (GMO) canola is discovered in the 70-year-old farmer’s crop.

On Sunday August 5th in Atlanta, GA, film maker/ producer Kellon Akeem hosted a private screening for his short film “A Father’s Love”.

The founder of Atlanta-based Mansa Productions premiered “A Fathers Love”, at The Gathering Spot in Downtown Atlanta. Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with the film’s stars both in front of and behind the cameras.

A Father’s Love tells a teenage love story with several unusual twists. The film’s cast includes Terayle Hill (SuperFly; Blue Bloods; Love, Simon), Adriyan Rae (Atlanta, Star, SuperFly), Tichina Arnold (Martin, Everybody Hates Chris), and E. Roger Mitchell (Hunger Games, Sully, Selma). The 19-minute film made its public debut in June at the 2018 American Black Film Festival (ABFF).

Jessie Usher, the film’s co-producer and co-writer, has starred in projects such as Survivors Remorse, Independence Day 2, and Son of Shaft. Allen Maldonado, the film’s other co-writer, currently stars in Blackish and the new hit comedy series, The Last OG. Making his directorial debut is RonReaco Lee, who also stars on Survivors Remorse.

Mansa Productions’ Founder, President and CEO Kellon Akeem said, “This is an exciting time for Mansa Productions. It was an honor for our first film to be included in the Emerging Director’s Showcase at ABFF. However, it’s going to be personally gratifying to screen A Father’s Love in my adopted hometown of Atlanta. We are just beginning our journey to becoming an influential player in the industry and look forward to sharing our upcoming slate of projects with the world.”

Mack Wilbourn, a successful Atlanta businessman, and Dwight Howard, the NBA All-Star, lead the investment team behind Mansa Productions. The company’s next project will be its first full-length film, Cross of Redemption. Actor Omar Epps wrote the script and will co-produce the project along with Mansa. The film will star rapper and actor Tip “T.I.” Harris as the lead character. Also in pre-development, is an unscripted daytime talk show starring Usher and a reality show featuring Howard.

The son of a pastor, Akeem was raised to be an active participant in the “family business” of outreach and mission work. This sparked an innate desire to build and uplift the communities around him, something that has now become the cornerstone of his filmmaking. The company’s name is a Mandinkan word meaning “king,” which is why the logo includes a crown.

Following the screening, Terrell Thomas spoke with Kellon Akeem on the short film “A Father’s Love”, his journey as a film makers and film producer, how he selected the cast of the film and more. As Kellon prepares to take his film to a few upcoming film festivals, Kellon broke down his plans for the remainder of 2018 and plans for a few of his upcoming films.

The interview was conducted by Terrell Thomas. The interview was shot by Danny Digital.

A Father’s Love, the debut film of Mansa Productions, was introduced to the world during the 2018 American Black Film Festival (ABFF) in Miami Saturday, June 16.

The film, written by Jessie T. Usher (Survivor’s Remorse, Independence Day: Resurgence, Shaft) and Allen Maldonado (Survivor’s Remorse, black-ish, The Last O.G.) and directed by RonReaco Lee (Sister, Sister and Survivor’s Remorse), focuses on a young man named Andrew (Terayle Hill) who is hesitant to accompany his girlfriend, Tiffany (Adriyan Rae), to the abortion clinic, believing she is killing his child. However, he doesn’t know the devastating role her father has played in her decision.

The film, which also features fellow Survivor’s Remorse alum Tichina Arnold, explores the meaning of fatherhood and how all fathers, both bad and good, affect their children’s lives for better or worse. Shadow and Act spoke with Usher and Mansa Productions founder, president and CEO Kellon Akeem during ABFF to ask them how it felt to finally debut the film and the process they went through to bring the film to the ABFF.

Monique Jones: I just finished watching A Father’s Love, which was entertaining and shocking since I didn’t realize the twist until the very end, and it was very deep. How does it feel to have the film premiering at the ABFF? 

Jessie T. Usher: To touch on what you said, thank you. That’s actually what we were going for, so I’m glad to hear that. This has been such a crazy ride and such a long, difficult process, but it’s made it very rewarding. With the intention of screening at the ABFF — before the script was even written, to be honest — to see things come together the way they have is one of the most rewarding moments of my career. This is our first project that we’ve actually gotten together and produced and for it to be on a huge platform, it’s humbling it’s uplifting.  It’s a lot of emotions at one time.

Kellon Akeem: It’s amazing.

JTU: It’s amazing. We’re so relieved we’re here now, and the process is just coming to an end, but it’s a new beginning at the same time. It’s amazing.

MJ: What was it like working on this short film?

KA: Me and Jessie have become really, really good friends, and I would even say family. Being able to do a project with your family is very fun. Then we brought in other friends (like) Allen Maldonado and RonReaco Lee. It became really family-oriented even with the cast. It’s friends and family that we’ve become, and it’s a blast. Any time you can have a family reunion, it’s a good time.

MJ: The film delves into both the positive and horrific sides of fatherhood. Why was fatherhood something you wanted to tackle?

JTU: That’s an interesting question. It kind of just came together that way. We sat down with myself, Kellon and Allen and just started brainstorming on what kind of story we wanted to tell. I guess it came together based off the lives we live. I’m a new father, Kellon is a new father, Allen has raised so many people in his neighborhood. He’s like a dad to six or seven kids, and even to this day he’s still taking care of them. I guess fatherhood was on our minds at the time. Allen will tell you he’s been through some things very similar to what takes place in this movie. It’s just a story we feel like isn’t being talked about enough or in the way we did. So that’s how it came together.

KA: And just to piggyback on that, there’s not always a father that it’s happening (with), but there are so many households where a family member, a cousin or uncle, is taking advantage of their kids. Like (Rae) said (in the film), she didn’t even know what was happening. We just wanted to bring awareness to the fact that this type of thing can happen, and you just have to always be aware, especially with the mental health things we’re going through and all the suicides and everything. We just wanted to do our part and bring some awareness to the situation.

MJ: As you mentioned Jessie, there’s also Allen Maldonado and RonReaco Lee who worked either in a writing or directing capacity. What was it like working with Maldonado and Lee?

JTU: It was great. We all came together from Survivor’s Remorse. That’s when I met RonReaco and Allen, and just knowing them from that and where we’ve gone since we met, I always knew I wanted to work with them on other projects, on our own projects especially. To be able to facilitate something and have everyone be available and ready and willing is a great feeling.  We always talked about doing work together outside of Survivor’s Remorse, and this is a great start, and it feels good. As Kellon said, these are people that we’re close to. It’s one thing to do a project and see it come together, but to do a project with your friends and your family is so much more rewarding.

MJ: What was it like working with the actors on set, including Tichina Arnold who makes a cameo appearance, and developing the characters with them?

JTU: That was a very interesting process. We knew we wanted people who would make strong enough choices to make impactful performances for such a powerful story. Having Tichina on set was a blessing. Having a personal relationship with her brought that together, myself having one, (and) Kellon knows Tichina. We’re all close to her. We just reached out and asked her for this huge favor, and she was more than happy to do it for us, which was amazing.

We wanted actors we could trust so we could step back and let them do their thing and feel whatever it is they feel and trust their own process. It was a decently long process to put the actors together, and I’m very happy with the ones we selected. I think they all knocked it out of the part. Everybody embodied their roles beautifully. As an actor myself, it was nice to sit back and watch words we put on the page come to life from these people. It’s a huge trust thing when you write something and you hand it to somebody else; all you can do is hope and pray that they have a similar vision to the one you have and, fortunately, they did.

MJ: What do you hope audiences take away from the film?

JTU: There are a lot of underlying messages in this movie. When it comes to anything I do in this industry, I want people to feel, to feel something. This is art, and if art is received the correct way, you get emotional about it. Sitting in the theater and hearing people’s responses — they would laugh when we were hoping they would laugh; they were shocked when we were hoping they’d be shocked; some people cried at times when we were hoping we’d see a tear. It was beautiful. I’m hoping people take away the strength that fathers have. That’s the message of Terayle, our lead. He’s strong enough to overcome (issues), and he’s not even a father yet. The idea, the power that comes with that title, we just want people to realize that there are different types of fathers out there.

KA: Good and bad.

JTU: Good and bad. But the love that a father has can overcome anything.

Mansa Productions includes investments by Atlanta businessman Mack Wilbourne and NBA All-Star Dwight Howard. The company’s upcoming projects include its first feature-length film, Cross of Redemption, written and co-produced by Omar Epps and starring T.I. (credited as Tip “T.I.” Harris); a television project about the true life story of one of the biggest kingpins in the U.S. also starring Harris and an unscripted daytime talk show co-produced by Usher.

Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz and Bill Skarsgard are toplining the indie sci-fi drama Nine Days, the debut feature from writer-director Edson Oda.

Duke is to pay a reclusive man in an unreal house who interviews potential candidates, including the characters of Beetz and Skarsgard, to enjoy the privilege of being born. Nine Days is produced by Mandalay Pictures, Nowhere, Juniper Productions and Macro, in association with The Space Program, Mansa Productions, Oak Street Pictures, 30WEST, and Datari Turner Productions.

The project, which also stars Benedict Wong and David Rysdahl, was developed through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Labs. Production is set for this summer.

“I’m thrilled to be working with such an incredible cast and amazing team. So grateful for all the support I have received. Nine Days is a very personal story to me, and I can’t imagine a better team to help me tell it,” said director Oda in a statement.

Duke appeared on a handful of television shows such as Person of Interest before being cast as M’Baku, the bellicose leader of a warrior kingdom in Black Panther. He became a breakout character and also appeared in Us.

Beetz gained notices for her breakout work on FX’s Donald Glover-led series Atlanta. The show trampolined her into high-profile movie roles, including the Deadpool sequel and Fox Searchlight’s upcoming Noah Hawley sci-fi drama starring Natalie Portman.

Skarsgard played Pennywise the Clown in It and also appeared in Assassination Nation. CAA Media Finance and 30WEST are representing worldwide distribution rights for Nine Days. The producer credits are shared by Jason Michael Berman, Mette-Marie Kongsved, Laura Tunstall, Matthew Lindner and Datari Turner.

Nine Days is executive produced by Charles D. King, Kim Roth, Gus Deardoff, Kellon Akeem, Dwight Howard, Renee Frigo, Beth Hubbard, Trevor Groth, Duke, Will Raynor, Michelle Craig, Piero Frescobaldi, Caroline Connor, Mark G. Mathis, Mark C. Stevens and Larry Weinberg.

Oda is repped by CAA and Gotham Group. Duke is repped by CAA, while Beetz is repped by Gersh and Grandview. Skarsgard is repped by WME and Magnolia Entertainment, Wong is repped by Anonymous Content and Rysdahl is repped by ICM and Grandview.

Business partners Jessie T. Usher (“Survivor’s Remorse,” Independence Day: Resurgence, Son of Shaft) and Kellon Akeem hosted a private game-night-inspired mix and mingle on Saturday, Jan. 13 to celebrate the launch of their production company, Mansa Productions.