Night Catches Us

Employing archival film footage from the Black Panthers heyday, Tanya Hamilton's historical drama, set in post-Panther Philadelphia, is an understated, almost elegiac study about how the past never really goes away. (MSPIFF)

In the summer of ’76, as President Jimmy Carter pledges to give government back to the people, tensions run high in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where the Black Panthers once flourished. When Marcus returns—having bolted years earlier—his homecoming isn’t exactly met with fanfare. His former movement brothers blame him for an unspeakable betrayal. Only his best friend’s widow, Patricia, appreciates Marcus’s predicament, which both unites and paralyzes them. As Patricia’s daughter compels the two comrades to confront their past, history repeats itself in dangerous ways.

Night Catches Us masterfully reckons with the complexity of its characters’ revolutionary ideologies and internal desires. Bell-bottoms, Afros, potlucks, and Caddies set the scene as the film potently interweaves political media with an evocative soul-inspired score, summoning a vivid sense of place and time. The golden light that bathes characters’ faces seems to express the promise—and elusiveness—of the necessary change Marcus and Patricia struggle for so dearly—each by separate means.(Sundance Film Festival 2010)

“…this rich and satisfyingly multi-character drama about the intersection of the personal and the political also showcases wonderful performances by stars Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington.” (Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times)

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