Queen & Slim | Trailer Park | Film News, Buzz & Rumours

MELINA MATSOUKAS’S FEATURE DIRECTORIAL DEBUT, QUEEN & SLIM, is not a brave film. To call something brave is to deify it, to ignore the complicated life before the death. But Queen & Slim is about many lives — to call it brave is to ignore that we too are mired in the story, which leaves our heads spinning and hurting in the wake of Queen and Slim’s love.

It chronicles a relationship between Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya), who meet for a first date, after which a police stop goes terribly wrong and the pair end up on the run.

The movie asks us “if Black people are appreciated in life, and how they live, or if it’s in death that makes people matter,” director Matsoukas says. “I hope [ Queen & Slim] does bring empathy for people of colour. I hope that you’re able to exist in their shoes, whether you’re Black or not. I want all audiences to understand what it feels like when we are pulled over by police. When we see that siren behind us, the fear that it immediately evokes, and think about why.”

Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe are not cryptic about the film’s political and social messages — it’s not codified in deep metaphors. Matsoukas wants the viewer to think about systemic racism while watching the film. This is why every aspect of the film is deliberate; nothing is accidental in Matsoukas’s visual vocabulary. “I come from a place where I use everything to tell you a story,” she says.

When art made by women of colour holds up a mirror to society as it is, is this art confident or realistic? Queen & Slim is “speaking about how we leave this world, how we’ve lived our lives, how we’ve made it matter,” Matsoukas says.