Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Parker Sawyers”

"Southside With You" Movie Chronicling Michelle and Barack Obama's 1st Date Opens to Raves at Sundance

Southside With You
(PHOTO CREDIT: SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL)

It’s not every couple who has a feature film made about their first date. Then again, not every couple is the Obamas.

Southside with You, directed by Richard Tanne and starring Tika Sumpter and newcomer Parker Sawyers, details the Obamas’ multilayered first date (despite Michelle’s insistence that it was, most certainly, not a date) as the couple traverses through Chicago, going to the Chicago Art Institute, the movie theater and finally, an ice cream parlor.
Though the flick doesn’t have a release date yet, it recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where critics gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up, calling it a classic romance story. Check out some of the outstanding reviews below.
From Variety: “Despite its unassuming modesty of scale, budget and commercial potential, “Southside With You” stands as something unique, even audacious in American independent movies: a fact-based presidential “prequel” that seeks to present two iconic world figures as convincing and relatable romantic leads.”
From The Hollywood Reporter: “The result makes you realize how few realistic and three-dimensional date movies have been made in an era of throbbing hook-up encounters and R-rated horny teen gross-outs.”
From Mashable: “If you’d never heard the name Barack Obama, Southside With You could stand alone as a sweet, mature drama with layers of social and racial issues, family dynamics and, yes — romance.”
From MTV: “It’s hard to distance Barack and Michelle from their historical legacies, but Tanne’s nuanced approach succeeds at making this film about the tempestuous beginning, not the happily ever after.”
From The Daily Beast“A first kiss so hot it made theatergoers at Sundance melt in the aisles.”
We can’t wait to catch this one in theaters.
article by Taylor Lewis via essence.com

"Southside With You": 1st Look at Parker Sawyers & Tika Sumpter as a Young Barack & Michelle Obama

unnamed1
Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers as Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama in “Southside With You” (photo via deadline.com)

Here is one of the first images from Southside With You, a film inspired by the first date of future First Couple Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

Written by Richard Tanne, who also is making his directorial debut, the feature takes place in summer 1989 in Chicago, where the young associate Obama (Parker Sawyers) woos his colleague Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) in a romantic dramedy about the couple’s early romantic encounters. The eventful day took them from the Chicago Art Institute to a screening of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing to the eventual first kiss, which occurred outside of an ice cream parlor.

Sawyers recently wrapped the Oliver Stone-directed Snowden opposite Joseph Gordon Levitt and will appear in The Autopsy Of Jane Doe along with Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch. Sumpter stars on OWN’s The Haves And The Have Nots and will appear in Universal’s Ride Along 2 with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube.
IM Global and State Street Pictures are producing the film, with Tanne and Sumpter as producers alongside Glendon Palmer and Robert Teitel. Tracey Bing is executive producing.
article by Amanda N’Duka via deadline.com