Traction

A first date rom-com setup that immediately detonates into a minefield of race and social discomfort—the kind of premise that makes you wince before you laugh, which is exactly where the real tension lives. Most scouts would hedge this one; Felix knows subversion when he sees it.

Uphold's structural restraint—trapping us in real time with mounting social awkwardness—recalls the formal precision of Koreeda or early Kiarostami, where discomfort becomes the grammar itself. A film acutely aware of how comedy and complicity share the same air.

The genius move is making the jokes themselves the problem rather than the punchline—every attempt at humor becomes another exposure of Jake's blindness, turning a 5-minute runtime into something that should collapse under its own contradiction but doesn't, because of one clean editorial choice to stay in the other person's face.

When it comes to the topic of systemic racism in America, there's no denying we're currently in a cultural moment. For the first time since the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, it feels like we're no longer ignoring the issue—we're picking the scabs of wounds that never really healed.

But, as a white male, what exactly can I contribute to the conversation? I don't know the pains of being marginalized and I never will.

Traction isn't a film where a white person attempts to contextualize the experience of a black person. Rather, it's about someone coming face to face with her own privilege—about confronting that reality face on and what it means.