Sundance review: 'Exhibiting Forgiveness' is a demanding, but beautiful, story about breaking the cycle of toxic fatherhood

A tough watch but an ultimately beautiful one, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” is an emotional story of the ugly cycle of abusive fatherhood and the difficult work of breaking it.

Writer-director Titus Kaphar’s film is deeply informed by his own experiences, though calling it semi-autobiographical seems inadequate. The main character, Tarrell (André Holland), is a painter, like Kaphar (in fact, Kaphar painted Tarrell’s canvases). Tarrell is quickly becoming an acclaimed young Black artist, and his agent, Janine (Jamie Ray Newman), wants him to mount another gallery show, hot on the heels of his last one. But Tarrell has a deal with his musician wife, Aisha (Andra Day), that he’ll stay home and take care of their son while Aisha records her next album.

Tarrell is also working to help his mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), move out of the house where she raised him — a move Joyce is reluctant to follow through on. Further complicating Tarrell’s life is the sudden return of his father, Laron (John Earl Jelks), a recovering crack addict who treated Tarrell badly as an adolescent, as he applied what he learned from his own father.

It would be easy for Kaphar to lapse into the storytelling clichés of addiction and abuse, and there are moments, particularly in the flashbacks, where the movie comes perilously close to falling into those traps. The cast — Holland, Day, Jelks and particularly Ellis-Taylor — keep the emotions real and raw, and the layers of art, between Tarrell’s paintings the evoke the old neighborhood and Aisha’s music (Day wrote or co-wrote many of the songs here), provide a depth usually not achieved in such tales.

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‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for drug content, language and some violence. Running time: 117 minutes.

Screens again: Sunday, January 21, 5:30 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 1, Park City; Tuesday, January 23, 9:15 p.m., Megaplex Gateway 1/2/3, Salt Lake City; and Friday, January 26, 10 p.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City. Also available online via the Sundance portal, Thursday-Sunday, January 25-28.