A man seeks justice after police kill his unarmed son in Director Nate Parker’s drama, American Skin.
Parker also stars in the film as a Marine veteran working as a school janitor and trying to mend his relationship with his son after a divorce. When his son is killed during a routine traffic stop and the police officer is acquitted, he takes matters into his own hands.
On February 22, Parker discussed the making of American Skin in a DGA Virtual Q&A moderated by Director Jeff Byrd (King's Ransom).
During the conversation, one of the things Parker discussed was using life lessons to guide his directing. “One of my greatest lessons in film I learned from a young person: ‘If you can't do it right with a little, you won't be able to do it right with a lot.’ For a Director, it was music to my ears. When you have less than a million bucks to make a film, there’s not a lot of room for things to go on the floor. So, my plan was to juxtapose the calm before the storm with the worst part of the storm. I try to do that in my films where there is peace and chaos and there’s only art in-between. It comes out of lack. Innovation came from necessity and those are things that I think my crew executed that expertly well.”
Parker’s other directorial credits include The Birth of a Nation, which earned him a DGA Award nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Feature Film.
Parker has been a DGA member since 2015.
You can listen to Parker's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
About the DGA Virtual Q&A Program
Mirroring the ever-popular DGA Membership Screening Q&A program in the virtual space, DGA Members can now learn more about films directly from the filmmakers in this series of livestreamed conversations.
