The Dutchman (2025)

[BluBonnet]

One of the most eagerly anticipated movies showing at this year's SXSW...

In Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play “Dutchman,” a 20-year-old Black man named Clay is seduced and taunted by Lula, an older white woman, while riding the New York City subway — an allegory for the lethal dynamic between Americans. In updating the play into a modern-day film, director Andre Gaines, making his feature debut, has reimagined Clay as a 45-year-old businessman (André Holland), and expanded the story beyond Lula (Kate Mara) to include Clay’s wife (Zazie Beetz) and their couple’s therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who further complicates Lula’s enigmatic motivations with his own mysterious agenda. All is not quite what it seems here.

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