Daily Stream: Shola Amoo on The Last Tree

Now showing in a Wex virtual screening room, Shola Amoo's The Last Tree has earned comparisons to Barry Jenkins' Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight for its moving depiction of a young black man coming of age in three clear-cut acts. But as Amon Warmann wrote for Cinevue, "The Last Tree bucks the coming-of-age blueprint in new, specific ways." One of the points of distinction is the element of autobiography in Amoo's tale of Femi, who grapples with his sense of self after moving as a pre-teen from his home with a white foster mother in the English countryside to the inner-city London home of his Nigerian-born birth mother. The filmmaker (seen above with leading man Sam Adewunmi) also spent his early years with a foster family before reuniting with his birth family in South London.

Tonight at 6 PM EDT, Indie Memphis Movie Club will present a livestream interview with Amoo about The Last Tree and what went into it. Many of the venue's weekly Movie Club programs are available only to members or through a paywall, but tonight's talk is free for all.

Watch the Q&A with Shola Amoo via Indie Memphis on YouTube.