Adapted by Soul Food director George Tillman Jr from Angie Thomas’ bestselling Black Lives Matter-inspired young-adult novel, The Hate U Give is an expansive and electrifying hybrid of coming-of-age tropes and powerful social drama.

Boasting a remarkably textured lead performance from Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games) as code-switching Starr Carter, who presents one face to family and friends in her predominantly black neighbourhood, but a different one to her white prep-school classmates and boyfriend Chris (KJ Apa, Riverdale).

Initially playing like a smart teen movie, the film’s effervescent flow is brutally disrupted when Starr witnesses the fatal police shooting of her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith, Detroit). This shift in tone is multi-layered, as Tillman and screenwriter Audrey Wells go beyond the facts of a fictional yet all-too-familiar case to consider the human cost behind blaring headlines. Stenberg’s reluctant, traumatised heroine is supported by a richly talented adult cast, notably Russell Hornsby as her politicised father Maverick and Regina Hall as pragmatic mother Lisa. Articulating a divergent array of community standpoints, we see Insecure creator Issa Rae as an activist lawyer and Common as a cop who’s also Starr’s uncle.

A brilliantly modulated balancing act between dark and light, anger and optimism, white privilege mined for pointed laughs and black fury portrayed as a galvanizing force for change. Full review Jessica Kiang, Variety

a loudspeaker blast of a teen movie **** Guardian

Intimate, empathetic and surprisingly powerful. **** Little White Lies

**** Observer