Cord Jefferson's American Fiction is a satire about an African American novelist who criticizes the industry that restricts Black storytelling to trauma and poverty narratives. The film is a response to the rise of social movements like #BlackLivesMatters and #OscarsSoWhite, which often focus on traumatic violence and provide white liberals with an outlet to empathize with suffering. However, making a movie as a response to industry limitations can limit the movie's intention. Cord Jefferson, a TV writer on Succession and Master of None, delivers a superb feature debut, filled with snappy banter and gags, with a masterful ensemble cast including Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K Brown, and Tracee Ellis Ross. Jefferson adapts Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure into a thorny existential character drama about a writer who feels unseen but never makes himself vulnerable enough for people to truly see him. Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is the professor who pulls a Bamboozled by cynically writing a novel filled with pandering cliches and tropes about Black struggle that salivating white gatekeepers line up to make it a sensational hit. The success does little to alter Monk's disgruntled and bewildered state.

Jefferson's film is wisely critical of Monk and society the author is railing against. There is a strain of self-hate in the character, who is regularly ridiculed for his taste for white wine and white women. Monk copes with micro-aggressions in the office and on the street while insisting in the most blatant self-delusional ways that he doesn't believe in race. When Monk sees a best-selling novel called We's Lives in Da Ghetto celebrated by the literary establishment for its Precious-like storytelling, he attends a panel where the author Sintara Golden, played generously by Issa Rae, is code-switching to entertain her mostly white audience. On a lark, Monk writes his own hood novel under a pseudonym, which would snuggly fit into the 50 Cent movie Get Rich or Die Tryin'. The movie almost gets away from Jefferson during outrageously funny moments, as actors like Adam Brody play up the industry's ignorance and craven exploitation of marginalized voices to the point of parody. The festival audience was howling, likely because few feel implicated in such interactions. "American Fiction" is a satire directed by Cord Jefferson, based on Percival Everett's novel, Erasure. The film explores the dilemma of making entertainment that criticizes it, as it can easily fall prey to its own pitfalls. The film is grounded by the family melodrama and warm interactions between Monk and his siblings, allowing the Black characters to escape the world's perception of them. The film follows Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a struggling writer who becomes fed up with "lesser" books that pander to white people through stereotypical hood narratives. Monk decides to write a fake book, initially titled "My Pafology" and later re-titled the F word," which is so stereotyped that it mirrors the corrupt tastes of the white literary establishment. Despite expecting the novel to fail spectacularly, it becomes a raging success, leading to a major book deal and a movie option.