Amber Havard makes a powerful screen debut as a disaffected teen in Bull (photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films / © Bert Marcus Film)

BULL (Annie Silverstein, 2019)
Opens virtually May 1
Live Q&A Sunday, May 3, free with advance RSVP, 4:00
www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/bull

Last week, the Professional Bull Riders hosted the first sports event in America since the Covid-19 shutdown postponed or ended stadium sports, including basketball, baseball, hockey, and others, as well as the Olympics. On April 25-26, PBR, whose latest motto is “Be Cowboy,” held its Las Vegas Invitational in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with competitors maintaining social distancing guidelines and riding in an arena with no fans. It was such a success that PBR will return to the Lazy E in Guthrie for “Unleash the Beast” tournaments May 9-10 and 16-17. You can now go behind the scenes of bull riding in Annie Silverstein’s deeply affecting debut feature film, Bull, but you will have to stream it at home rather than watching in a theater with other people.

An Un Certain Regard selection at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Bull is a gently told coming-of-age story involving fourteen-year-old Kris (first-timer Amber Havard) and the middle-aged Abe Turner (Rob Morgan), a former professional bull rider who now works as a bullfighter, the men who protect the riders as they try to stay on the bull for the toughest eight seconds in sports. It’s the fighter’s responsibility to make sure the bull doesn’t gore or trample the rider after he dismounts or is ejected, as the fighters put their own lives in danger over and over again in the course of one event.

Kris is a quiet white girl who lives with her grandmother (Keeli Wheeler) and little sister (Keira Bennett); Kris’s mother (Sara Albright) is in prison but is nearing parole. Abe is a dour black man living alone down the street from Kris. Abe chastises Kris when her pitbull kills one of his chickens. Kris doesn’t seem to care about it — she doesn’t appear to care about much of anything, walking around with a sullen look, saying little. When Abe is away at a tourney, Kris breaks into Abe’s house and invites her friends to a wild party there during which they trash the place. When Abe gets back and catches Kris there, he calls the cops. Kris’s mother begs Abe and Officer Diaz (Karla Garbelotto) to let her go. Offered the chance to make things right, she mumbles to the officer, “Can’t you just take me to juvie?” Her eyes are distant, resigned to a life she has already given up on. Meanwhile, despite the beating his body is taking, Abe is determined to keep on fighting, either with PBR or the regional black cowboy rodeo circuit. Kris starts working for Abe, doing laborious chores while also becoming interested in bull riding herself. Abe has no intention of turning into a mentor to her, but soon they are forming an unusual bond, two lonely souls in desperate need of real human connection.

Expanding on her award-winning short Skunk, Silverstein has created a tender, moving tale that subtly reveals such issues as race, opioid abuse, the prison system, and parental neglect in rural America. Silverstein wrote the script with her husband, Johnny McAllister, after more than five years of research, including getting to know the men, women, and children living in such communities as Acres Homes outside of Houston and the athletes participating in local rodeos. She had previously spent ten years working with children in her native Seattle, which helped her define the character of Kris. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner glides between intimate, handheld shots and the explosive excitement of bull riding, filming in such locations as the Old William Johnson Arena in Egypt, Texas, and the Roy LeBlanc Okmulgee Invitational Rodeo in Oklahoma.

Kris (Amber Havard) and Abe (Rob Morgan) form a unique bond in film set around black rodeo circuit (photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films / © Bert Marcus Film)

Professional bullfighters Demetrius “Teaspoon” Mitchell and JW Rogers served as consultants and appear in the film, along with pros Devonte Toler, Tyler Travis, Cody Tesch, Nate Justice, and Lucas Teodoro; most of the cast are nonprofessionals in their first film, including Havard, who was discovered in a school cafeteria and beat out a thousand other girls for the part. She has an extraordinary screen presence, so modest and genuine that you will want to reach into the screen and shake her out of her character’s malaise. Morgan, who has appeared in such television series as Stranger Things and Daredevil and such films as The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Just Mercy, is edgy and boldly sensitive as the uneasy, unsettled Abe; the two actors avoid cliché as their lives become unexpectedly entangled.

On May 3 at 4:00, Silverstein, Havard, Morgan, and producer Monique Walton will participate in a live Q&A moderated by Gamechanger CEO Effie Brown, focusing on the film itself as well as the history of black rodeo communities; you can register in advance for free here. To find out more about bull riding and bullfighting, please check out the annual twi-ny talks I’ve conducted with PBR stars over the last five years.