Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson reminisce about Sundance

by Murtada Elfadl

 

In the final part of the conversation I moderated between the actresses Zainab Jah (who will next be seen in Seacole) and Jayme Lawson (who will next be seen in The Batman), they talk about going to Sundance for the first time. They were there in January to premiere their film together Farewell Amor in which they play mother and daughter immigrants. With nostalgia for film festivals in full bloom, let's take a trip back to a happier time just a handful of months ago...

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Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson on the Vulnerability of Theater Acting

by Murtada Elfadl

Lupita Nyong'o and Zainab Jah in "Eclipsed"

We continue the conversation between Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson from the Sundance 2020 film Farewell Amor, that we started yesterday. Both actresses have worked on stage and in film and today they're speaking to what diffrentiates the experiences. Jah also tells us about the time she co-starred on Broadway in 2016 with Lupita Nyong’o in Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, about five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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A Mother's Day conversation between Zainab Jah (Farewell Amor) and Jayme Lawson (The Batman)

by Murtada Elfadl

Jayme Lawson and Zainab Jah play daughter and mother in "Farewell Amor"

In celebration of Mother’s Day I recently moderated a conversation over Zoom between actors Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson. We'll be sharing it with you in three installments. For the first dispatch Jah and Lawson talked about their performances as mother and daughter in the Sundance 2020 film Farewell Amor, written and directed by Ekwa Msangi, and their favourite mother/daughter relationships at the movies.

Jah has previously appeared in TV shows like Homeland and Deep State but is best known for the Broadway play Eclipsed co-starring Lupita Nyong’o. Lawson is a newcomer and a recent graduate of Julliard who appeared last season in The Public Theater's production of For Colored Girls. She recently booked a major role in an upcoming film that you may have heard of, The Batman (2021)... 

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"Farewell Amor"

... one last Sundance review from Murtada Elfadl 

Early on in Farewell Amor, Angolan immigrant Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) sits down to eat with his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and teenage daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson), they talk about all the years they spent apart. Walter moved to New York to escape the Civil War and was hoping to bring over Esther and Sylvia, yet they were stuck in Tanzania for seventeen years. That's a long time to be apart; Are they still a family or just three strangers trying to avoid the awkwardness of small talk?

It’s a moment of fraught emotions and stilted silence. Yet as Mwine, Jah and Lawson play it, it is also a moment of guarded release. The wait is over, there’s awkwardness, doubt and trepidation but also hope...

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