The Powerful The Hate U Give Trailer Reveals First Look at YA Adaptation

The Hate U Give is not your average teen movie. While on the surface it seems like the story of Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is relatively straight forward high school movie, the film is a whole lot deeper than that. Starr is a fun-loving high school girl who lives something of a double life. During the week, she attends a prep school where she hangs out with her rich, white friends. During the weekend, she hangs out with her friends from home in the poor, largely African-American neighborhood she lives in. The story takes a very dark, sadly topical turn when her childhood best friend is killed by a police officer. The shooting blows up Starr’s life, forcing her to reckon with the disparate halves of her life and what, if anything, she intends to do about the plight of the people she grew up with.

Based off Angie Thomas’s acclaimed YA book, The Hate U Give deals with issues effecting young African-Americans in America today, centering on the Black Lives Matter movement and the shootings of unarmed black children. The first trailer of George Tillman Jr.’s film is potent, with The Hunger Games’ Stenberg looking perfectly cast as Starr, a girl whose life is upended and will have to decide whether to take action, possibly upsetting the equilibrium of her carefully constructed life, or pretending like everything is fine.

Joining Stenberg are Regina Hall, Anthony Mackie, KJ Apa, Russell Hornsby, Algee Smith, Sabrina Carpenter, Issa Rae, Lamar Johnson, and Common.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Hate U Give:

Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds: the poor, mostly black, neighborhood where she lives and the rich, mostly white, prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Now, facing pressures from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and stand up for what’s right. THE HATE U GIVE is based on the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller by Angie Thomas and stars Amandla Stenberg as Starr, with Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, KJ Apa, Algee Smith, Sabrina Carpenter, Common and Anthony Mackie.

The Hate U Give opens in theaters on October 19, 2018.

Featured image: (L-R) Algee Smith as Khalil and Amandla Stenberg as Starr in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE HATE U GIVE.