See You Yesterday [Review]

This is a movie that came out last year and was nominated for best first feature and won best first screenplay at the Film Independent Spirit Awards this year, it is available on Netflix to watch, I remember seeing it on Netflix browsing through titles and never gave much thought to watching it. However, being a member of Film Independent I have the opportunity to attend what they call Coffee Talks which is where a member of Film Independent moderates a discussion of the film with the filmmakers and then does a little audience Q&A at the end. Living in Florida on the complete opposite coast of all the action in Hollywood, I was never able to attend many of these events until recently due to COVID-19 they are all taking place on the Zoom platform, at least that good came out of the situation we are in, giving myself the opportunity to attend events such as this where it was a discussion with the director and write (Stefon Bristol) and the other writer (Fredrica Bailey). Signing up for this Q&A I realized pretty quickly that I should actually watch the film that I am going to have them talking about. What if teenagers figured out time travel? How would they direct that ability? That is the underlying story of this film, yes I said underlying, first and foremost it is about police brutality. The movie revolves around two teenage students who are both extremely gifted when it comes to technology and science, Eden Duncan-Smith and Dante Crichlow, who have figured out time travel and put it into a wearable backpack device. Their focus is using it to when a science fair until Astro who plays Eden Duncan-Smith's brother is fatally shot by a police officer over mistaken identity for a robbery suspect. To save her brother the two are able to jump back twenty-four hours and try to stop the shooting from taking place, thus saving her brothers life, until their interference in time creates ripples that have far worsening effects, resulting in them having to do several jumps to try and set the timeline back. Taking place in Brooklyn this movie doesn't try to explain it rules of time travel or go deeply into how their technology functions, instead it asks audience to just go with it as the main focus is to draw attention to police brutality and prejudices occurring in areas such as Brooklyn, doing this with a science-fiction film as the driving factor is actually quite brilliant as it delivers a subject that has been represented by several movies recently, but, using a different genre to engage a whole other audience. This is the first feature film to be be directed by Stefon Bristol and for both writers himself and Fredrica Bailey, which is apparent during the film as there are some continuity errors and some scene setups that don't quite line up because of the time paradoxes created, though even for advanced filmmakers anytime your playing with time travel this becomes a factor. Its not a shiny polished film, as I said though the idea is to draw light to a societal problem occurring in our world and the characters surrounding that main idea are strong and the time travel aspect just makes it feel fresh. Resulting in you can either watch this movie from a science-fiction stand point or from a culturally conscious dramatic point of view. Its under an hour and half which works well it doesn't add any unnecessary fluff, its a good watch especially if you want to introduce pre-teens to the subject of what is police brutality and overreach without using a long tense dramatic alternative. C.