Years ago when playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote the deeply personal “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” as a drama school project, little could he have imagined that it would one day be turned into a major Hollywood movie, let alone one that would be generating serious 2017 Oscar buzz. Drawn from McCraney’s memories of his own search for identity as a queer youth in Miami’s poor and tough Liberty City neighborhood, “Moonlight” tells the story of young Chiron, who despite painfully losing his mother’s attention to crack, is ironically taken under the protective and nurturing wing of a local drug dealer and his girlfriend (played by Janelle Monáe). The film also follows the arc of Chiron’s relationship with his childhood friend Kevin, a powerful and sexually charged bond that shifts dramatically over the film’s three chapters, following them from age 10 to age 16, then jumping ahead to their early 30s.
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