Clement Virgo directed The Book of Negroes. After that, he swore he wouldn't make another film in period costume about slavery. He wanted to tell the same story without the distance history gives you.
So he set Steal Away five minutes in the future. A world where refugees are persecuted and purged. Angourie Rice plays Fanny, a teenager whose family takes in a refugee named Cécile, played by Mallori Johnson. The bond between them becomes obsessive. The final act turns into something close to the Underground Railroad.
The title comes from the old abolitionist spiritual. When enslaved people sang "Steal Away to Jesus," it was a coded escape signal. That's what the film is about.
If you liked Get Out or Beasts of the Southern Wild, this is in that space. A genre film that means it.
In US theaters now.
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