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2025 SFFILM Festival

The Dutchman

Directed by Andre Gaines

USA | Fiction | 94

20 Apr
Sun, Apr 20 at 5:45 pm PT

Description

In this powerful reimagining of Amiri Baraka’s Obie-winning 1964 play, successful-but-troubled man about town Clay (Festival tributee André Holland) has an important evening ahead—a party launching the political campaign of his friend Warren (Aldis Hodge)—when he meets a tempestuous woman named Lula (Kate Mara) on the subway. Both Clay and Lula have demons—he’s in marriage therapy and she’s a racial provocateur who threatens to upend his life. Baraka’s seminal and disturbing work addresses racial and sexual polarities between Black men and white women and Gaines’s update suggests that society—and Black men in particular—needs to push past and through the play’s dynamics in order to heal. Stephen McKinley Henderson as therapist Dr. Amiri (note the name!) and Atlanta’s Zazie Beets as Clay’s wife Kaya are memorable in supporting roles, but it’s Mara and Holland who faceoff fearlessly and unforgettably in Gaines’s coruscating film. —Rod Armstrong

Attendee Information

André Holland will also be at the 2025 SFFILM Festival for our Centerpiece screening of Love, Brooklyn where he will join us for a special pre-screening tribute conversation.

Director Andre Gaines

Hailing from Toledo, OH, Andre Gaines studied journalism and chemistry at Northwestern University before getting his MFA in dramatic writing at Tisch School of the Arts. Through his company Cinemation Studios, he has produced a number of films including Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) and Bill Nye: Science Guy (2017). He made his directing debut with the documentary The One and Only Dick Gregory (2021), followed by two more documentaries, After Jackie (2022) and Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics (2024). The Dutchman is his narrative debut.

Film Details

LanguageEnglish

Year2025

Runtime94

CountryUSA

DirectorAndre Gaines

Executive ProducerCassian Elwes, Lauren Dandridge Gaines, Peter Graham, Joshua Blum, Devon Libran

WriterAndre Gaines

EditorJoel Viertel

CinematographerFrankie Demarco

MusicDaniel Hart

CastAndré Holland, Kate Mara, Zazie Beetz

Closed CaptionsClosed Captions are confirmed for this film

Audio DescriptionAudio Descriptions are not currently confirmed for this film

American Sign Language (ASL) InterpretationAmerican Sign Language Interpretation is not currently scheduled for this film