My favorite discovery back at the 2024 New York Film Festival was Yashaddai Owens’ Jimmy, a jazzy, French New Wave-esque portrait imagining James Baldwin’s (Benny O. Arthur) arrival in Paris in November 1948. With a plethora of biographical dramas seemingly rinsing and repeating key moments of a famous subject’s life in a formally familiar fashion, Owens radically rethinks the form of the biopic, one that transports the viewer with the fresh sights and sounds of a new city that would go on to shape the author’s work. Shot on grainy, evocative 16mm in black-and-white, it’s an adventurous gamble that succeeds on every front.
Finally acquired for a U.S. release by Strand Releasing, it’ll open on July 31st beginning at NYC’s IFC Center. On August 2, the theater will also host a celebratory screening in honor of James Baldwin’s 102nd birthday, featuring a post-screening conversation with Yashaddai Owens and Barry Jenkins. Ahead of the release, the new trailer and poster have arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “It’s 1948 in Harlem, New York and a young James Baldwin is seeking something more than his stateside life. Weaving this starting point into a modern narrative, Jimmy charts Baldwin’s arrival abroad through energetic and sweeping handheld camera work in Yashaddai Owens’ debut feature film. From the rich landscapes of Istanbul and onto the streets of Paris we follow Jimmy in his early experiences of life abroad, blurring our consciousness of time and place to uncover the truth of how an artist navigates their way in the world.”
See the trailer and poster below.
