Till tells the real-life story of 14-year-old Emmett ‘Bobo’ Till whom we meet as he prepares to leave Chicago to go on vacation to Mississippi to stay with his relatives in the summer of 1955. From the first instances in the film showing Emmett’s love of dancing, snappy dressing and trading quips with his grandmother, we see how much light he has.

His mother Mamie is anxious about being apart from him, especially given the violently racist environment for Black people, with lynchings and vigilante racist crime plaguing America with no consequence for the white perpetrators.

Mamie warns her son to “stay small” and explains that there’s a different set of rules for Black people in the south which means he has to be extra careful about how he interacts with white people.

Tragically, Mamie’s concerns prove to be right when Emmett supposedly whistles at a white woman in a local store and is later kidnapped and lynched by a racist vigilante mob of men.

Both the murder and the events that follow are true to history, with the cast portraying real figures in Emmett’s life and the wider civil rights movement.

This story of a mother’s fight for justice is the powerful event movie you need on your January agenda