The African Desperate
Director: Martine Syms Run Time: 97 min. Format: DCP Release Year: 2022
Starring: Diamond Stingily
It’s MFA grad Palace Bryant’s final 24 hours in art school, and she is not going to the f*cking graduation party! She needs to get back home to Chicago from Upstate New York, but that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups.
Chaos reigns in the riotously funny debut feature from visual artist Martine Syms. With a breakthrough performance from Diamond Stingily, this hallucinatory day-in-the-life of a Black artist is a rollicking satire of art-world pretensions and a rowdy portrayal of sex and drugs in the Internet age. – MUBI
Double Feature with EMILY THE CRIMINAL
“Syms brings the invisible, everyday negotiations of a Black artist to startlingly visual life with layers of images and sounds.” –Devika Girish, New York Times