American Fiction

Anchored by a tour de force performance from Jeffrey Wright, writer and first-time director Cord Jefferson’s film is a confident work that delights in exploring thorny concepts through humour and clear-minded irreverence.

Cord Jefferson, who previously made episodes of Watchmen and The Good Life, marries a light touch and broad humour with affecting familial dysfunction and biting observations on race. Cultural crises are seldom so entertaining.

This satire shouldn't be laugh-out-loud funny ... but it is.

...part of the satire... is how Monk doesn’t really see the connection between his own life and the depictions of Black life that “flatten the Black experience,” as he puts it.

It started really sharp, but then it became really fuzzy.

The story works on two levels, first as a prickly critique of the pressures facing Black creatives. But equally satisfying is its depiction of the abrasive, complicated dynamics in a high-achieving family.

Jefferson has achieved that rarity: a social satire with heart, combining social criticism with family melodrama...[Full review in Spanish]

As a struggling author who is rightfully angry at the world but also consumed by self-hatred, Jeffrey Wright has never been better.

Yes, there are tons of ignorant people working in entertainment ... In trying to skewer what a lot of them have gotten away with in the business while also telling a more believable story, American Fiction pushed my suspension of disbelief too far.

In Cord Jefferson's American Fiction, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is tired. He's a writer of dense books, intelligent and full of meaning and metaphor, but they don't fly off the shelf.