MVFF44: Passing Conversation with Rebecca Hall, Ruth Negga, Nina Yang Bongiovi

The 44th Mill Valley Film Festival (October 717, 2021) presents an on stage conversation with Passing Director Rebecca Hall, Actor Ruth Negga, Producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, moderated by U. S. Indies Programmer and Mind the Gap Manager Faridah Gbadamosi. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga deliver their most powerful performances to date in this exquisitely nuanced drama centered on one form of Black resistance to the Jim Crow onedrop rule (passing as white), and the complexities of privilege and sacrifice that follow. Director Rebecca Halls elegant adaptation of Nella Larsens 1929 novella focuses on two former high school classmates, Irene (Thompson) and Clare (Negga), whose chance encounter at a stylish New York City tea salon leads to a rekindling of their friendship, and the realization of how similar and divergent their lives have become. Both are married, welloff, with children, but while Irene is comfortable as a highclass Harlem society wife (often admonishing her darker skinned hous