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Emancipation: trailer

Full trailer for new feature film with Will Smith and Australia's Charmaine Bingwa.

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Feature film Emancipation, starring and produced by Will Smith, will screen on Apple TV+ in December.

Directed and executive produced by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) it also features Australia’s Charmaine Bingwa, Ben Foster, Gilbert Owuor, Mustafa Shakir, Steven Ogg, Grant Harvey, Ronnie Gene Bivens, Jayson Warner Smith, Jabbar Lewis, Michael Luwoye, Aaron Moten and Imani Pullum.

“Emancipation” tells the triumphant story of Peter (Smith), a man who escapes from slavery, relying on his wits, unwavering faith and deep love for his family to evade cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of Louisiana on his quest for freedom. The film is inspired by the 1863 photos of “Whipped Peter,” taken during a Union Army medical examination, that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly. One image, known as “The Scourged Back,” which shows Peter’s bare back mutilated by a whipping delivered by his enslavers, ultimately contributed to growing public opposition to slavery.

Writer: William N. Collage
Producers: Will Smith and Jon Mone through Westbrook Studios, Joey McFarland though McFarland Entertainment and Todd Black through Escape Artists
Executive Producers: Chris Brigham, Antoine Fuqua, James Lassiter, Heather Washington, Cliff Roberts, Glen Basner and Scott Greenberg

Friday, 9 December on Apple TV+.

2 Responses

  1. The photos were amongst those featured in ‘Ken Burn’s The Civil War’, the great 1980s doco series shown on SBS and ABC over the decades since and available on disc and pay TV now.

  2. The theme of this movie looks almost custom made for a Will Smith comeback, recent period TV Series and movies about the barbaric brutality of Black slavery in 1800 America, like Amazon’s Underground Railroad (2021) which effectively depicted the deprivation and horror of this period in American history with graphic detail, can be distracting for some audiences, especially in a politically divided America. It will be interesting to see what the US critics think of Apple TV+’s Emancipation.

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