Academy Award winner Kevin Costner (“Dances With Wolves”) stars as a widowed grandfather left to care for his biracial granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) in “Black or White.”
“This is Eloise,” explains Costner in the film’s first official trailer. “She’s my granddaughter. My wife and I raised her after my daughter died. Then life threw us a curve. And now her grandmother’s gone, too. The love of my life.”
If caring for his young granddaughter and losing his wife weren’t difficult enough, Costner also finds himself embroiled in a custody battle with Eloise’s paternal grandmother, played by Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer (“The Help”).
“Do you really plan on raising her by yourself?” she asks Costner.
He does. “I’ve lost everything. I can’t lose her, too,” he explains.
Mike Binder wrote and directed the emotional and heartfelt family drama, which explores mourning, addiction and challenges inherent to interracial families.
“Do you dislike black people?” Anthony Mackie asks Costner while he’s on the stand in the courtroom. “Not all of them,” he responds candidly.
In an interview with TheWrap editor in chief Sharon Waxman at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Costner revealed: “I just see a story that I think is of its time that reflects our time.
“It’s a modern look at where we’re at. So many children these days are products of biracial marriages. It’s just a fact of life,” he explained.
Costner, Mike Binder and Todd Lewis produced the performance driven film, which also co-stars Gillian Jacobs and Bill Burr, and is already sparking a lot of conversation/chatter.
“Black or White” hits the iPic Westwood theater for a one week run Wednesday, Dec. 3rd and opens wide in theaters everywhere on Jan. 30, 2015.
Sponsored by Relativity Media.