Inside How ‘Moonlight’ Director Barry Jenkins and His Cast Turned Personal Pain Into Art

TheWrap Magazine: “If you don’t give people a productive, honest, organic image of their lives, they’re going to start to think they don’t exist,” director...

A number of films got a boost at the Venice, Tellurice and Toronto International Film Festivals this fall, but nothing went from obscurity to hot property quite the way “Moonlight” did.

After a strong bow in Telluride, Barry Jenkins’ deeply moving drama, which ventures bravely into the treacherous world of drug dealing, crack addiction, love, poverty, family and sexual identity in Miami in the 1990s, screened to a rapturous reception in Toronto, followed by an emotional Q&A with a tearful cast.

Using three actors to play the main character, Chiron, the film follows a boy who is so shy and alone that he barely notices his own conflicted sexuality in a community where being gay is an invitation to be targeted.

The film is about family, love, but also sexual identity — it’s talking about somebody who’s grappling with his sexual identity in a community where that’s not OK.

JENKINS When I read Tarell’s piece, our biographies were so well aligned, with the exception of our sexual orientation.

[...] yet, in the source material that was a key component of the character.

[...] Read: 'Moonlight' Debuts to Rapturous Applause, Tears in Emotional Screening at Toronto Film Festival

Trevante is big–he doesn’t have the same build as the other two actors who play Chiron, and he doesn’t look like somebody who would be grappling with homosexuality.

Naomie, can you talk a little bit about why you agreed to take on this role, which is essentially a mother who has abandoned her child and is lost to drugs?

[...] I was raised in a community of women who were like that, intelligent and capable and really inspirational.

[...] I didn’t want to play a crack addict–I’ve always drawn the line and said, “I’ll never play a crack addict, because I want to portray positivity.”

[...] I felt, here’s an opportunity for me to play a crack addict in a completely different way, and give her many more layers and complexity.

The thing that I discovered, actually, that really helped me, was that the vast majority of the women with a crack addiction that I studied had experienced rape or some sort of sexual trauma in their life.

Mahershala, you play a drug dealer who’s selling drugs to Chiron’s mom, yet you care for him in a very real and authentic way.

MAHERSHALA ALI I was so drawn to this piece because drug dealers, people who come up in urban environments like this, when you see them on the page they’re not three-dimensional like that.

[...] we know you mainly as your character on House of Cards, who’s this very polished, button-down, Washington power player.

I really respect and appreciate Naomie’s point of view, because there haven’t traditionally been enough positive and diverse representations of black women and people of color.

[...] it’s something to be really conscious of, as we make our choices–if you have a platform and an opportunity to make choices, make those choices intelligently.

[...] it’s still very important to us to put a mirror up to our culture, and try to embody and reflect these truths, so that people have an opportunity to see what is positive and what might be considered negative.