JUST MERCY Special Screenings

Talent attending: Bryan Stevenson (Writer (Memoir))

In the late 1980s, a young African-American, Harvard-educated lawyer named Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) declines various lucrative jobs and instead moves to Alabama determined to defend and fight for innocent death-row inmates. Early in his career, he takes on the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man sentenced to die for a notorious murder of a teenage girl despite significant evidence proving his innocence. The two men, along with the work of local advocate Eva (Brie Larson), tirelessly fight an uphill battle against politics and racism in their pursuit of justice for McMillian and the countless other African-Americans on death row.

Based on Stevenson’s book “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” this heartening, powerful drama directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (SHORT TERM 12) tells the story of one of Stevenson’s most provocative cases. –Sarah Harris