‘Till’ Trailer: Danielle Deadwyler Shows Mother’s Heartbreak, Defiance in Emmett Till Biopic

The latest trailer for Till, Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu's movie about the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, shows his mother Mamie Till-Mobley choosing an open casket funeral, a decision that galvanized the U.S. civil rights movement.

"The whole world has to see what happened to my son," Mamie, played by The Harder They Fall's Danielle Deadwyler, declares in the trailer as she looked to open American eyes to the barbaric act committed against her son by his murderers in Mississippi.

In a statement, Till director Chukwu said she deliberately chose to center his biopic on Emmett Till's mother. Till, set for a release by MGM's Orion Pictures to select theaters on Oct. 14, will receive a nationwide release on Oct. 28.

The biopic is written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu. The ensemble cast includes Deadwyler, Whoopi Goldberg, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Kevin Carroll, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith and Haley Bennett.

Till is based on the research conducted by documentarian Keith Beauchamp, and his relationship with Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till's cousin, Simeon Wright, who was an eyewitness to the kidnapping of Till and who served as a consultant on the project before his death in 2017.

For more than 27 years, Beauchamp has investigated the kidnapping, torture and murder of Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman, eventually getting the United States Department of Justice to reopen the case in 2004.

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