The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete

A film that takes place over one summer in New York. Mister is thirteen. He lives with his mother in a housing project in Brooklyn and has been held back for summer school. His mother uses drugs and works outside. One day the police take her away. Pete lives in the same building. He is nine, the son of a Korean mother, and has been left alone too. The two boys stay in the flat. They tell nobody, because if they do they will go into care. From there the film is a survival story. The power is cut, the food runs out, there is shoplifting, and the heat continues. Mister has a plan. He has found a notice for an acting audition and believes that if he gets the part he will go to California. What the narrative is interested in is not poverty but responsibility: a thirteen year old becomes a parent overnight, and the film shows that as exhaustion rather than heroism. Nobody notices all summer. Neighbours, the school and the institutions pass by in turn and none of them knocks. The last section is hard. The narrative offers no easy solution and the title warns you from the start. Skylan Brooks and Ethan Dizon play the two boys and the film rests almost entirely on them. The screenplay is by Michael Starrbury and was nominated for Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards; the film was also nominated at the NAACP Image Awards. It had its world premiere at Sundance on the twenty-fifth of January 2013 and opened in October of the same year. Skylan Brooks, Ethan Dizon, Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Mackie and Jordin Sparks are in the cast. George Tillman Jr. directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard American independent films built on child performances. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope; the narrative does not let up at any point.