TITLE: Rob Peace
Section: Premieres
Director: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Screenwriter: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Synopsis: Based on Jeff Hobbs’ bestselling and critically acclaimed work of non-fiction, the film tells the true story of Robert Peace (Jay Will), who grew up in an impoverished section of Newark and later graduated from Yale on scholarship. Peace led a dual life in academia, earning degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry while also selling marijuana to aid his father who he believed was unjustly imprisoned for murder.
Sales Agent: Republic Pictures
Panelists: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jay Will and Camila Cabello
First screening: January 22
Key quotes: In discussing his draw to make Rob Peace, Ejiofor shared, “I read the book about 10 years ago…and was so struck by the story. I just found it so powerful, and I think that the way that Jeff Hobbs talked about his friend, contextualizing the book as this real exercise in empathy and a way to look at these complex issues from a really humane perspective, it felt like the sort of thing that…was on the tip of your tongue, but you’d never articulated.
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It just felt very clear to me when I read the book about these intersections of Rob’s life, how this confluence of things put an enormous amount of pressure on him, and that sort of responsibility that he felt to family, to community, the more systemic issues around housing and education and the criminal justice system — how these things found their way into his life and really impacted the way that this very brilliant young man, this credit to his community, to his country, to all of the things that you want any young person to be, and all of that cut short because of the circumstances that he found himself in.”
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Ejiofor later reflected on the theme of social mobility present in the film and how it’s something that American society tends to be “slightly dismissive” of. “Some people feel very specific difficulties in these kinds of movements,” he reflected, “and so having that empathy, having that understanding of the people that are challenged by this, the way they’re challenged by it, seeing that in somebody like Rob Peace, a very brilliant person who’s not here with us now, it allows us to investigate a better allyship, to start to think about what people are going through and what their responsibilities are for themselves, what they’ve taken on board, and how they’re challenged by the different environments that they might find themselves in, and how we can better help that process.”
The Deadline Studio at Sundance runs January 19-23 at Montgomery-Lee Fine Art on Main Street, when the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sit down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.
Thank you to our sponsors McGee & Co., Final Draft, Portrait Creative Network, and Courser.