2013's 12 Years a Slave adapted the life of Solomon Northup to epitomize the brutal experience of American slavery and the white perpetrators' immoral privilege. It's a macro examination through the eyes of an individual. Chris Eska's The Retrieval compliments the Best Picture winner by honing in to a specific perspective; As teenage Will (Ashton Sanders) matures from boy to man across the misty woods, the sociopolitical tremors of Civil War ripple from off screen. The characters of The Retrieval encounter violence, but it's the gravity of memory and hope that reflects the world's harsh reality.
By 1864, Will's mother is dead, his father on the run, and his uncle, Marcus (Keston John) is renting him out to a group of bounty hunters that rely on black men to sneak across the Mason Dixon and round up runaway slaves. He's everyone's scrappy underling, including Marcus, who bosses him around like Cinderella's Stepmother despite being on a leash himself. There is no hope in this world, even as Will works beyond the horrors of textbook slavery.
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