Till tells the real-life story of 14-year-old Emmett ‘Bobo’ Till whom we meet as he prepares to leave Chicago to go on vacation to Mississippi to stay with his relatives in the summer of 1955. From the first instances in the film showing Emmett’s love of dancing, snappy dressing and trading quips with his grandmother, we see how much light he has.

His mother Mamie is anxious about being apart from him, especially given the violently racist environment for Black people, with lynchings and vigilante racist crime plaguing America with no consequence for the white perpetrators. 

Mamie warns her son to “stay small” and explains that there’s a different set of rules for Black people in the south which means he has to be extra careful about how he interacts with white people.

Tragically, Mamie’s concerns prove to be right when Emmett supposedly whistles at a white woman in a local store and is later kidnapped and lynched by a racist vigilante mob of men. 

Both the murder and the events that follow are true to history, with the cast portraying real figures in Emmett’s life and the wider civil rights movement.

While the civil rights movement achieved massive change and progress for Black people, many of the themes we see in Till are still relevant in today’s society.

We see in the film the sort of microaggressions Black people still encounter on a daily basis, such as Mamie being directed to a different part of the mall or Emmett being watched like a hawk as he looks around a shop. 

It’s a reminder that while we’ve come a long way since the 1950s, as recent events have shown, when it comes to fighting racism we’re far from done. 

Till also shows how the ability to make real change can also lie in our communities, and the power of coming together to make injustice an unavoidable fact that has to be addressed by wider powers. 

Mamie’s unyielding determination to seek justice for her son was the spark that ignited a new wave in the civil rights movement. 

When Emmett’s body was returned to her, she made the remarkable decision to hold an open casket funeral and invited people to see exactly what unimaginable violence had been inflicted on her son. 

“No one’s going to believe what I just saw. They have to see it for themselves,” she explains in Till. And they did. In their tens of thousands.

Emmett Till’s murder also made national news and encouraged marches, sit-ins and meetings, inspiring people who had previously been on the fringes of the civil rights movement to fight for change. 

Mamie also worked with civil rights leader T.R.M. Howard, played by Roger Guenveur Smith in the film, as he spearheaded a private investigation into Emmett’s lynching, gathering journalists and witnesses at his home and publicly condemning the murder.

Medgar and Myrlie Evers of the NAACP were also central to the quest for justice, while Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks would go on to reference Emmett’s murder as they pushed for change. 

There’s a reason why Till has generated awards buzz, and the power and emotion behind Danielle Deadwyler’s performance as Mamie is one of them. 

From the very first scene where we see her eyes glazed with painful memories as a 50s song plays over the car radio, it’s clear we’re in for no ordinary film. 

The thing is, amidst the horror of Till there’s an undying love that is there in every single scene. 

It’s present in Mamie’s passion and will to carry on despite her world collapsing, it’s there in the heartwarming flashbacks that show us how Emmett was raised with sheer joy, and it exists in the community as they rally around to make sure nothing like this can ever happen again.

Shocking yet deeply moving, Till is one film you won’t want to miss…