“Color Book” premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Festival and has garnered over 20 jury and audience awards at festivals, including the Austin Film Festival, Deauville American Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, and others. Writer/Director David Fortune has also been nominated for the 2025 NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Breakthrough Creative. His short film “Us” was selected as a winner of the Netflix Content Creators Program, while his film “Shoebox,” produced through the Indeed-Hillman Grad’s Rising Voices Program, was acquired and distributed by HULU.
Fortune is a Morehouse writer and director from Atlanta, Georgia. He was named one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2025 and received the AT&T Untold Stories Award in 2023, which provided a $1 million grant to direct this feature film. “Color Book,” which was released in June of 2024, will screen at the 56th Nashville Film Festival.
THE PLOT
Fortune chose as his two leads, Will Catlett as Lucky and Jeremiah Daniels as Mason. They portray a Black father and his developmentally disabled son as the film follows them on a trip to a baseball game. Writer/Director Fortune’s time as a camp counselor at a camp for Downs’ Syndrome children served him well as preparation for “Color Book.” His desire to shine a light on children with disabilities and, specifically, on those with Down’s Syndrome, was original and had not been seen onscreen previously. In addition to the story of a father and son dealing with grief and adversity, Fortune also wanted to depict a healthy father/son relationship in the Black community, something, he says, which also has not been depicted onscreen previously. As he told PopCulturalist, “People want to see truth love, and themselves onscreen.”
BLACK & WHITE
The decision to film “Color Book” in black-and-white was a good one. It fits. While this is a depiction of a healthy father/son relationship, the young Mason’s (Jeremiah Daniels) mother, Tameeka “Tammy” Hutchinson (Brandee Evans) has recently been killed in a car accident. Dad Lucky decides to take his son to a baseball game, buys a car to replace the one totaled in Tammy’s accident, and the car almost immediately breaks down. That puts the pair on public transportation. Most of the scenes take place on or near the train carrying them to the game at Trust Park in Marta. Director of Photography Nikolaus Summerer has done a great job with the train footage. The music, by Dabney Morris, also works.
THE LEADS
What really carries this film, however, is the relationship between the two leads, especially Will Catlett as the ironically named Lucky. When the camera focuses on Catlett, he conveys the necessary gravitas of a father struggling to remain on an even keel, himself, and also trying hard to care for his son.
WILL CATLETT
The 43-year-old Catlett has appeared in many television and film roles, including as Verton Freeman in 2020’s “Lovecraft Country.” As long ago as 2013 he was appeared in “The Mentalist” as a patient. He has the look of an actor ready to carry a film as the lead. In fact, Director Fortune told Will Catlett, whose first lead this is, “You’re going to be the captain of this ship” during a pre-film telephone interview. As Fortune explained, “I don’t direct them (the actors). I allow them. I give them the freedom to color within the lines.”
Catlett himself spoke of picking up many cues from his co-star’s real-life parents, Terrence and Joy Daniels, about how to react as the father of a Downs’ Syndrome son. Of his masterful handling of his role Catlett said, “I just was present. I just show up and be and exist.” For Jeremiah, it was his first film role.
CONCLUSION
The film was a sensitive, if slow-moving, serious, and somber slice of life. As a first feature-length film, it was touching and compassionate and showed much promise. The film runs over 2 hours, running 115 to 139 minutes (depending on the source). It is not until 50 minutes in that real tension arises. Lucky falls asleep on the train and temporarily loses Mason. (Mason has wandered off after a balloon vendor. Balloons feature in key scenes). Maybe I am being overly critical of today’s audiences, but films today have to provide tension and conflict early on to retain audience interest.
The moment when Lucky awakens and realizes that his son is outside the train and following a stranger up an escalator, while his helpless father, (still only half conscious), is being whisked away, will grab any parent who has ever been in charge of a child who goes missing— even if only for a few moments. I can remember a similar moment at a public swimming pool. I couldn’t find my then elementary-school-aged son for less than five minutes. Panic ensued. I wanted this moment of crisis to emerge earlier. I also envisioned many alternative opportunities for the resolution of Mason’s disappearance, especially in the way it was handled by police called to the scene.
But Will Catlett’s name as the lead was a stroke of genius and good fortune for David Fortune. Catlett’s name is one I will look for again, hopefully soon, in other films, and that is also true of Director David Fortune’s debut with this, his first feature film. “Color Book” will screen in Nashville at the 56th Nashville Film Festival September 18-24, 2025.
