The San Francisco Jimmie Fails lives in today isn’t the one he grew up in. In A24’s newest drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Fails — played by Jimmie Fails, in a semi-autobiographical role — tries to recapture the magic of his youth. The gorgeous Victorian-style home his grandfather built in 1946, the house Jimmie himself grew up in, is now owned by a white couple that doesn’t treat it with the same tenderness. So, when they’re not there, he sneaks in and cares for the house, and he and his friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors, from Hostiles and White Boy Rick) daydream about everything the house once was and could be again.
Out of its Sundance premiere — where it won a directing award — Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri said The Last Black Man was “as much about delusion as it is about gentrification, and as much about friendship as it is about solitude.†Directed by Joe Talbot, the movie also stars Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold, Finn Wittrock, and Mike Epps. See it in theaters June 14.