‘Brief Tender Light’ Documentary To Make In-Person Ohio Debut at Upcoming Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival

Brief Tender Light, director/producer Arthur Musah’s film about his journey as an international student from Ghana, will make its in-person Ohio debut at 1:15 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 22, at Atlas Shaker Square as part of this year’s Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival. The movie follows four Africans as they navigate the American college experience while striving to make a difference for home.

The film had an awards-qualifying theatrical release in New York in January and a national broadcast premiere on PBS/POV on MLK Day this year. The festival run continues in the U.S. and expands internationally with an Italian premiere in Milan this September as well.

“At its core, Brief Tender Light is about whether youthful idealism can survive the process of growing up,” says Musah in a press release. “At the onset, I considered following African youths at different stages of college for a single year. As I developed the idea, it became clear that it would be more adequate that the project become a longitudinal documentary filmed over nearly a decade, in order to answer the questions that intrigued me. How does time, and iterations of trying and failing on projects gradually transform one into an engineer? How does a new world become home? How does a Black African become aware of racism in America? How does one’s identity shift, and how do different people weigh living for their community’s expectations versus their own desires? As a gay man, I also drew on my experience of turning away from Ghana and towards America in search of freedom to inform the film.”

A Cleveland native, co-producer Brook Sitgraves Turner is a graduate of UC-Berkeley and USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program. Raised in a multigenerational family of Black women, she’s focused on inclusive storytelling in film, television, podcasts and children’s books. She has been a member of Film Independent’s Project Involve Fellowship, has produced documentaries and The New York Times-recognized podcasts, and has written on television shows for Fox, Paramount and ABC. She also founded a health equity mutual aid organization that’s supported over 1,000 families in Los Angeles County.

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