Netflix has dropped the first trailer for Passing, the Sundance Award-winning film starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
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The film also stars André Holland, Bill Camp, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and Alexander Skarsgard.
Actress Rebecca Hall, whose mother was mixed-race and white-passing, helmed the film in her feature directorial debut and also wrote the script. Forest Whitaker, Nina Yang Bongiovi, Margot Hand are the producers.
As Netflix states:
Adapted from the celebrated 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, PASSING tells the story of two Black women, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Academy Award nominee Ruth Negga), who can “pass” as white but choose to live on opposite sides of the color line during the height of the Harlem Renaissance in late 1920s New York. After a chance encounter reunites the former childhood friends one summer afternoon, Irene reluctantly allows Clare into her home, where she ingratiates herself to Irene’s husband (André Holland) and family, and soon her larger social circle as well. As their lives become more deeply intertwined, Irene finds her once-steady existence upended by Clare, and PASSING becomes a riveting examination of obsession, repression and the lies people tell themselves and others to protect their carefully constructed realities.
Our positive review of the film out of Sundance reads, “[W]hat’s very remarkable is the exploration of the practice of passing, as presented by the film. We may be learning about it here through the lens of colorism via racism, slavery, bigotry and so much more — but it’s more so the idea that we all are have something we want to disclose, and in turn, something we want to showcase to the world.”
Watch the trailer below:
