Puerto Rican-American director Rashaad Ernesto Green was the winner of the Someone to Watch Award at the 35th edition of the Independent Spirit Awards for his feature film Premature. The film was nominated for Best U.S. Latinx at the 10th annual Cinema Tropical Awards.
Emotionally raw, intimate, and honest, Premature is at once timeless and bracingly contemporary in its portrait of a young woman navigating the difficult choices that can shape a life. On a summer night in Harlem during her last months at home before starting college, seventeen-year-old poet Ayanna (Zora Howard) meets Isaiah (Joshua Boone), a charming music producer who has just moved to the city. It’s not long before these two artistic souls are drawn together in a passionate summer romance. But as the highs of young love give way to jealousy, suspicion, and all-too-real consequences, Ayanna must confront the complexities of the adult world—whether she is ready or not.
New York native Green is a graduate of Dartmouth College and NYU Grad Film, and recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Award, Spike Lee Fellowship and NYU Dean’s Fellowship. Green’s first feature, Gun Hill Road, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and received nationwide distribution. His second feature, Premature, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by IFC Films in February 2020. His films have screened on Netflix and HBO, and at festivals internationally. He’s been supported by Cinereach, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, IFP, HBO, NBC, Time Warner and Warner Bros.
