Amandla Stenberg Takes on Police Brutality in The Hate U Give Trailer

The first trailer of The Hate U Give, the movie adaptation of the best-selling YA novel by Angie Thomas, is here and in it, we get a glimpse into the life of Starr Carter (played by Amandla Stenberg) and how it gets turned upside down when her childhood friend Khalil (played by Algee Smith) is shot and killed by a white police officer.

Code-switching seems to be a big part of the film: Starr lives in the poor, black neighborhood of Garden Heights, but instead of going to the local high school where you’re likely to “get jumped, high, or pregnant,” Starr goes to Williamson. Here, white boys in uniforms pass her in the hallway and say “Yo! Those kicks are lit!” without ever noticing just how ridiculous they sound. “When I’m here, I’m Starr 2.0,” she says in a voiceover. Things get complicated when the community starts to mourn Khalil’s death and demonstrations in the streets seem like they might become violent. Starr worries about how getting involved would be perceived by both of the worlds she lives in. “It’s about black people, poor people, everybody at the bottom,” she says.

Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, KJ Apa, and Common also star. The Hate U Give is out in theaters on October 19.