LUCE Trailer

A high school paper should be innocuous, but in Luce one threatens to unravel a family, a school, and a star student’s future.

Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) seems like any number of success-bound students: top of his class, a star athlete, and a bit of a teacher’s pet. You wouldn’t guess that he began life in a war-torn country, plucked as a boy from the violent life he knew and transplanted into upper middle class suburban America. That he thrived made him and his adopted parents pillars of the community, a status all of them are reticent to give up when Luce writes an alarming paper for class. And yet his past can’t be ignored, and suddenly everyone is questioning whether Luce is the model young man he appears to be.

You may recognize Harrison Jr. from supporting roles in It Comes at Night and The Birth of a Nation, but nothing he’s done has required this level of inscrutability. He has to nail this part for the whole thing to work, and he’s teeing off against some of the best in the business with Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Octavia Spencer all co-starring.

The film is adapted from the play of the same name by J.C. Lee. That may make it seem like a step down for director and co-writer Julius Onah, whose last film was the sci-fi mystery The Cloverfield Paradox. Admittedly, that film wasn’t exactly well-received, but don’t let that discourage you from checking out Luce. It garnered rave reviews during its festival run, including from yours truly (which you can find here), and that should be all the convincing you need to check it out.

Luce is directed by Julius Onah and stars Kelvin Harrison Jr., Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Octavia Spencer. It will be released in the US on August 2nd, 2019 and in the UK on November 8th, 2019. For further release dates, click here.

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