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The Last Tree ArtMattan Films Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Shola Amoo Screenwriter: Shola Amoo Cast: Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Nicholas Pinnock, Ruthxjiah Bellenea Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 6/23/20 Opens: June 26, 2020 Distributed by Artmattan Films which boasts” films about the […]

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In what has been one hell of an election year, Jon Stewart is cutting through all of it with his biting political comedy Irresistible starring Steve Carell, Rose Byrne and Chris Cooper. The Focus Features film was originally set to hit theaters on May 29, but like all films impacted by the pandemic, it pivoted to PVOD and drops today.

Written by Stewart, Irresistible follows a Democrat political consultant (Carell) who helps a retired Marine colonel (Cooper) run for mayor against a Republican rival (Byrne) in a small Wisconsin town. This marks a reunion of sorts for Stewart and Carell, who was a recurring correspondent on The Daily Show between 1999 and 2005. The film is also Stewart’s latest outing as a feature film director. His first pic, Rosewater, was released in 2014 and told the story of Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who was accused and brutally interrogated by Iranian forces for being a spy.

The story of a British-Nigerian boy growing up in rural Lincolnshire and inner-city London is told with compassion in Shola Amoo’s profoundly moving drama

Writer-director Shola Amoo’s “semi-autobiographical” second feature is an affecting coming-of-age tale pitched somewhere between the sublime American poetry of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight and the streetwise British grit of Noel Clarke and Menhaj Huda’s Kidulthood movies. A huge leap forward from the experimental collages of 2016’s A Moving Image, The Last Tree bristles with film-making confidence, plunging us into the world of its young protagonist as he struggles to find his place in a strangely changing environment. Powerful performances, tactile visuals and an elegantly fluid score add to the impact of this impressively understated yet profoundly moving tale.

We open in Lincolnshire, with a scene of bucolic beauty reminiscent of the dreamy field-of-corn sequence in Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher. Here, 11-year-old Femi (Tai Golding...

Other openers include horrors ‘Ready Or Not’, ‘Don’t Let Go’.

John Crowley’s The Goldfinch and Shola Amoo’s The Last Tree are two of the 2019 festival titles opening at the UK box office this weekend amid a field of strong holdovers.

Released by Warner Bros, The Goldfinch is an adaptation of Donna Tartt’s best-selling novel about a boy taken in by a wealthy New York family. Ansel Elgort stars as the young man whose troubled childhood leads him into the world of art forgery. Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, and Jeffrey Wright have supporting roles in the film...

Sam Adewunmi is charismatic as a Nigerian-British foster child forced back to the inner city in Shola Amoo’s second film

This sombre, yet heartfelt and warmly acted drama is from Shola Amoo, whose 2016 debut was the engaging docudrama A Moving Image, about communities in Brixton, south London. The Last Tree is about a Nigerian-British boy called Femi who was fostered out to Mary (Denise Black), a carer in the countryside, because of unspecified problems suffered by Femi’s mum – a strong performance from Gbemisola Ikumelo.

Ten-year-old Femi lives a happy, idyllic existence in this rural place, but it is all shattered when his mum shows up, now ready to take him back, and poor Femi has no choice but to comply, despite Mary having given a promise that he need never leave her. Femi now moves to a tough London neighbourhood and he finds that his mum is an...

Picturehouse Entertainment has released a new trailer and poster for drama ‘The Last Tree’.

Directed by Shola Amoo, the film evocatively explores the subject of belonging in a fresh and poetic way. Featuring a range of standout performances from a talented cast, including Sam Adewunmi in the lead role, this beautifully shot and stunningly directed film is quite simply unmissable.

Also in trailers – David Oyelowo tries to change history in trailer for ‘Don’t Let Go’

The film hits cinemas September 20th

The Last Tree Synopsis

The Last Tree is the semi-autobiographical story of Femi (as a child played by newcomer Tai Golding), a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after being fostered in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner-city London to live with his birth mother. In his teens, Femi (Sam Adewunmi) is struggling with the culture and values of his new environment. Femi must decide which path to adulthood he wants to take,...

"A hypnotic coming-of-age story." Picturehouse Cinemas in the UK has unveiled the first official trailer for The Last Tree, an acclaimed film that first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year where it picked up a number of rave reviews. The Last Tree is the second feature film from filmmaker Shola Amoo, and is about a boy of Nigerian descent growing up in England. After initially growing up in foster care in the countryside, he moves to London with his mum, but he doesn't feel like he fits in there. The film is a semi-autobiographical second feature from Amoo, exploring what it means to be a young black man in the early 00s in London. Sam Adewunmi stars as Femi, with a cast including Nicholas Pinnock, Denise Black, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Jayden Jean-Paul-Denis, Rasaq Kukoyi, Ibrahim Jammal, Tai Golding, and Layo-Christina Akinlude. This looks incredible, I'm very much looking forward to it.

From Nigeria to Lincolnshire then London and back again, writer/ director Shola Amoo’s semi-autobiographical The Last Tree tells the tale of a young boy Femi (Tai Golding). After being raised by foster mother Mary (Denise Black) in rural Lincolnshire, Femi is suddenly, reluctantly reunited with birth mum Yinka (Gbemisola Ikumelo) and forced to move with her to grubby, brutalist London. As well as having to adapt to the urban municipal, Femi finds himself beaten and being raised under new strict rules then enrolled in a City Academy and forced to defend himself against bullies.

Shola Amoo’s enchanting second feature examines how changing environments and fractured families have a significant effect on young minds and can substantially re-shape identities. The script follows Femi through childhood into adolescence, where he is played by Sam Adewunmi. As a teenager, Femi is livid with religious mum Yinka, and uses her as target...

A child too young to understand the complexities of adulthood or desire to ask questions when the pain of their ramifications is still raw. A mother too proud to excuse the situation she created with the all too justifiable reasons able to imbue her with the strength necessary to offset a self-hatred fostering her projection of abusive anger. These two archetypes are intertwined within Shola Amoo’s The Last Tree as though an ouroboros damning each other to the suffering their silence creates, the hindsight necessary for healing many years and even more hardships away. And to make matters worse is the possibility that forgiveness and/or acceptance might never actually arrive. The hurt ruling their actions threatens to lead them astray, warping compassion with resentment until reconciliation appears impossible.

The child is Femi. Raised under the foster care of Mary (Denise Black) within the rural calmness of Lincolnshire, he...

Exclusive: Here’s first footage of UK feature The Last Tree, which will play day one at Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

Writer-director Shola Amoo’s (A Moving Image) BFI-backed sophomore film follows Femi, a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after a happy childhood in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner London to live with his mom. Struggling with the unfamiliar culture and values of his new environment, teenage Femi has to figure out which path to adulthood he wants to take, and what it means to be a young black man in London.

Cast includes emerging UK actor Sam Adewunmi in the lead role, Nicholas Pinnock (Marcella), Gbemisola Ikumelo, Tai Golding and Denise Black. Producers are Lee Thomas (Crush) and Myf Hopkins (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy).

Great Point Media is handling international sales and will co-rep U.S. with ICM Partners.

New movies from Sally Potter, Sarah Gavron and Hong Khaou were among the BFI’s top ten Film Fund recipients in 2018. Potter’s untitled drama, starring Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock and Laura Linney, received the year’s biggest production grant of £1.1M. Scroll down for the top ten.

In 2017, the BFI — the UK’s lead organization for film — awarded seven movies £1M or more from its Film Fund. This year, Potter’s feature was the only one to cross the £1M mark. Other leading recipients in 2018 included Liam Neeson starrer Normal People and Keira Knightley pic Misbehaviour.

There is a healthy gender balance to the top ten awards this year with five male and five female directors in the mix. Two are feature debuts. Of course, different films will receive different amounts of money from different BFI funding strands, but this list gives a snapshot of...