Here’s the teaser trailer for Dear White People, a racial satire that’s been winning critical acclaim at film festivals and hits theaters on October 17. The movie comes from newcomer Justin Simien, who in the trailer and in real life is highly critical of the types of movies that get made featuring predominantly black casts, telling Variety, “Films with predominantly white casts can come in any form, tell any story, big or small, or black films, you have the light fluffy rom-coms or Madea movies and then you have the black torture awards movie.†Dear White People certainly doesn’t fall into any of these categories. Here’s the official description:
At prestigious Winchester University, biracial student Samantha White begins her radio show, “Dear White People, the amount of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, your weed man, Tyrone, doesn’t count.†Sam becomes president of the all-black residential hall Parker/Armstrong, whose existence is facing extinction in the name of diversification. TV reality show “Black Face/White Place†smells gold in Sam’s story and decides to follow it, rejecting the proposal of fellow black student Coco Conners, who pitched her show “Doing Time at an Ivy Leagueâ€. The clamor over Sam’s rise also becomes a career-defining opportunity for black misfit Lionel Higgins when he is asked to join the school’s lily-white newspaper staff to cover the controversy, even though he secretly knows little about black culture.