''Farewell Amor'' is a 2020 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Ekwa Msangi Ekwa Msangi is a Tanzanian-American filmmaker, producer, and screenwriter. She teaches Production and Cultural Studies at New York University. Early life Msangi was born to immigrants in Oakland, California. Her parents were Fulbright scholars wh ...

. It premiered at the 2020

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

. The film tells the story of a family of

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n immigrants who reunite in the United States after a years-long separation, and is told from the perspective of the mother, father, and daughter.

Plot

Walter came to the United States from

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long ago in search of a better life. He has since settled in New York where he works as a cab driver. His wife Esther and daughter Sylvia are just now able to join him in the US after 17 years apart. Both Walter and Esther have found ways to cope with the time and distance apart—with Walter carrying on a new relationship, and Esther finding community in the church. Walter regretfully breaks up with his girlfriend Linda prior to his family’s arrival. In Brooklyn, the family of three must share a one-bedroom apartment. Esther finds herself struggling not only to adjust to a new country and culture, but also to a distant husband and a marriage that has seemingly lost its fire. The teenage Sylvia also struggles with homesickness, but pursues dance against the wishes of her mother.

Cast

Release

It was released on December 11, 2020 in the USA. It was released on December 18, 2020 on

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

. It was screened at

51st International Film Festival of India The 51st International Film Festival of India was held from 16 to 24 January 2021 in Goa. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the festival went hybrid, there was physical and virtual screening of 50 films out of 224 films across various categories. B ...

in January 2021 in World Panorama section.

Home media

On June 14, 2022, ''Farewell Amor'' was released on Blu-Ray and DVD by

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

Reception

''Farewell Amor'' received critical praise, holding approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "A striking debut feature for writer-director Ekwa Msangi, ''Farewell Amor'' movingly captures the fallout from a long-separated family's reunion."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

reports a score of 75 out of 100 based on the opinions of 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". ''Farewell Amor'' was praised for its acting and direction. Writing for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', Kevin Crust wrote, "Though the film is shaped by big topics such as immigration, race, identity and religion, its power lies in its universality achieved through the small human details that tell its story of love and family. Its beauty lies in its empathy — something currently in short supply and therefore very welcome in the stories we consume."

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, 11380884
''Farewell Amor'': Coming Over
an essay by Tiana Reid at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

2020 drama films American drama films Films about families Films about marriage Films about immigration to the United States Films set in Brooklyn 2020s English-language films 2020s American films 2020 independent films