Ricky
Description
Back home in East Hartford, CT, after his recent release from prison, 30-year-old Ricardo “Ricky” Smith (Stephan James, The Piano Lesson) seeks to reclaim his freedom and make up for experiences lost during his teenage and early adult years. Ricky faces a tricky route to reintegrate back into a society that has left him behind, in a city that he no longer recognizes. He finds work through an old acquaintance, but his criminal record carries a stigma in the eyes of others, creating a tumultuous uphill battle on his path toward redemption. Embodying someone who has the odds perpetually stacked against him, James’s transfixing multilayered performance is simply astonishing. Rashad Frett makes a mesmerizing directorial debut as he empathetically explores the circumstances of this fraught yet tender man’s desperate search to find solace in a perilous world. —Jordan Klein
Biographies
Caribbean American filmmaker Rashad Frett earned his MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts film program. He was a 2023 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab Fellow, one among many honors. His short films include K.I.N.G. (2018), which won a DGA Student Film Award and a First Run Festival Best Graduate Film Award, and Ricky (2023), the basis for his first feature and the winner of another First Run Festival Best Graduate Film Award. He was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” for 2023.