The trailer for Barry, director Vikram Gandhi’s biopic about the life of a young Columbia University student in 1981 who happened to become the most powerful person on the planet 27 years later, was released today, and I’m happy to report that it looks like another great addition to Netflix’s ever-growing lineup of original films.
The second Obama drama of the year has been called “a thoughtful, intelligent film that also happens to be mighty entertaining,” and its star, Devon Terrell (“an unknown actor from Australia”), looks and sounds a whole lot like our soon-to-be ex-President.
A young Barack Obama, known to his friends as “Barry,” arrives in New York City in the fall of 1981 to begin his junior year at Columbia University. In a crime-ridden and racially charged environment, Barry finds himself pulled between various social spheres and struggles to maintain a series of increasingly strained relationships with his Kansas-born mother, his estranged Kenyan father, and his classmates.Barry is the story of a young man grappling with those same issues that his country, and arguably the world, are still coming to terms with 35 years later.
