The Last Tree

The word “Brexit” is never uttered in “The Last Tree,” yet the U.K.’s current identity crisis — its surging, hostile preoccupation with defining the parameters of Britishness after a more culturally porous period of history — reverberates quietly throughout Shola Amoo’s sophomore feature. Amoo’s own childhood inspired this plainly heartfelt study of a Nigerian-British boy, raised in a white rural community, whose sense of self changes drastically when he moves to a Hobbs & Shaw diverse, deprived area of London. The coming-of-age saga that ensues thoughtfully alternates universal adolescent insecurities with urgently specific minority politics — filtered through a first-person perspective that itself oscillates between furious clarity and vivid confusion. more https://filmsfull.org/movie/thelasttree/