“See You Yesterday” that streams on Netflix May 17th shatters stereotypes. Yet, the staunch reality of the all too familiar pattern of blacks being killed by cops is an integral part of the picture.
“See You Yesterday” follows two Brooklyn teens, C.J. Walker (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian Thomas (Dante Crichlow), who a build makeshift time machine. The high school best friends hope to save C.J.’s brother, Calvin (Brian Bradley), from being wrongfully killed by a police officer.
“See You Yesterday” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and EURweb caught up with the cast to talk about their groundbreaking film at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York.
EUR: Eden, Dante, and Calvin how did you connect to this story?
Brian Bradley: I immediately connected to the fact that it was basically like Flatbush, Brooklyn, where I’m from. The character felt very real and relateable to me because I do have a little sister in real life who I do talk to kind of the way I talked to CJ in the film.
Eden Duncan-Smith: I have to agree. I connect so much to CJ. I’m an outspoken black female scientist. I definitely love all the scientific aspects of the script. I think the freedom we were given with these characters definitely helped me to connect more with the script.
Dante Crichlow: I feel Sebastian is very similar to me in the way that he’s quirky. The very straight forward way that he acts when he’s around his best friend CJ. So it was very easy for me to connect.
EUR: What was your experience with Sci-fi prior to this movie and were you a fans?
BB: I’m a huge ‘Back to the Future’ fan. So when I heard Michael J. Fox was going to be involved it was like surreal. I thought he was supposed to tweak the film or something. But when he arrived on set it was crazy. And now seeing black people in this sci-fi setting and letting the world know about it is dope. And it’s like the first time, I think, we’ve seen that in this generation. So it’s pretty wild.
EDS: Yeah, I think that’s the best thing about this film is that it’s so brand new and it’s something that you have literally never seen before. And, Stefon Bristol (director) really does a great job with weaving all of those intricate aspects into it, the police brutality, the teenage scientists, and then time travel
DC: I’ve been a fan of scifi for the last 20 years.
EUR: How important is it to revisit these kind of police shootings in this kind of film?
EDS: one thing I realized about the film and how it’s written is how it shows the spectrum of what police brutality could be. It shows that the police can just harass you for no reason for trying to talk to your little sister on the street. Or, they can just pull up on you just because they think you’re somebody else. Or, they could murder you in cold blood. So there’s so many different things that a black teenager, black people have to deal with in terms of police brutality on a second to second basis.
BB: I feel it’s crazy cause I deal with stuff like that in real life. Like police just being annoying and harassing you because of the color of your skin, or cause you fit a certain profile. I think the scifi element touching on police brutality is going to spark a conversation. And I think that’s always the goal.
DC: I feel like starting the conversation is exactly what this movie is trying to do. It’s obviously about the coming of age of these two teenagers, them being scientists, and being STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), students, but at the same time it segues into police brutality. This makes it very accessible for all audiences to start a conversation about this topic. So this is going to be a very important movie, especially during this time-frame when these shootings and police brutality is still happening, even as we’re talking right now.
“See You Yesterday” is produced by Spike Lee, and executive produced by Matthew Myers and Jason Sokolott.
Marie Moore is a New York based syndicated columnist
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