Morris from America

Description

Morris Gentry (Markees Christmas) is no different from a lot of 13-year-old American boys: He loves hip-hop, hates school and is starting to develop a particularly keen interest in girls. The fact that he’s been uprooted from the US to live in Heidelberg, Germany, however—where his widowed dad (The Office‘s Craig Robinson) coaches the local soccer team—makes it hard for him to fit in. Chubby, culturally adrift and hauling around a huge chip on his shoulder, Morris would rather hang out by himself and refine his freestyle-rap skills. But a blonde (Lina Keller), who may have taken a liking to him or may view the African American young man as an accoutrement to her own teenage rebellion, forces Morris to get out of his comfort zone and explore his adopted hometown—for better or worse. Building off the affinity for fish-out-of-water stories that he demonstrated in This Is Martin Bonner (2013), writer-director Chad Hartigan charts Morris’s journey with wit, wisdom and a wistfulness that distinguishes this drama—the winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival—from the coming-of-age pack. But the film’s genuine secret weapons are Robinson, who won Sundance’s US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Individual Performance, and Christmas, a breakout star who handles his character’s stranger-in-a-strange-Deutschland scenario with a spot-on sense of heart and humanity. —David Fear

Film Details