Shoot The Messenger

Joe (David Oyelowo) angrily decides that all his problems stem from his own black people. He proceeds to relate the events leading him to that conclusion, addressing the camera directly with ironic complicity.

Inspired to quit his high- paying corporate job to help his people by becoming a high school teacher, Joe institutes a system of “enforced education” via detention hall and public humiliation.

His most rebellious student (Charles Mnene) retaliates by falsely accusing him of assault, and the charge soon escalates into a media feeding frenzy, with Joe reviled as a racist by those he was trying to save. Driven to madness by the injustice, Joe winds up, in rapid

succession, as a patient in a mental hospital, as a beggar on a bridge over the Thames, as a believer in a community of fervent Christians, as a worker at an employment agency and as the loved one of a new girlfriend. Along the way, his racial hatred and belief that being black is a curse manages to alienate everyone he meets.

Shoot The Messenger is written by Sharon Foster and directed by Ngozi Onwurah.