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Brew up something special because it’s Black History Month! To commemorate the month of February we are shelling an episode out every week where we discuss a film that represents the accomplishments of the black community. Today we talk about Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film: Moonlight. The film follows a young African-American child’s life as he struggles with his sexuality and the troubles of growing up in a dysfunctional family. A hard-hitting, tear-jerking tale follows. We see Chiron through three stages in his life, represented in the film as three separate acts named: Little, Chiron, and Black. Act one of the film sets the stage. Here we meet Chiron as an adolescent, roaming the streets of Miami at the height of the war on drugs. We learn that Chiron is excluded and relentlessly bullied by the other kids on the block. The harassment from other kids, alongside his traumatic home with his drug addicted mother turns Chiron into a closed-off and damaged person, but things only get worse from here. Act two of the film features a teenage Chiron. Here we see him experience an escalated bombardment of harassment from the kids around him. We still see Chiron grapple with the hardships he experiences at home and with his sexuality. Lastly, act three shows us Chiron as an adult living on his own. This is a different Chiron, but we soon learn that this hardened version of himself is more than what meets the eye.

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