Rewind with Ellen hosts Ellen J. Wanjiru and Rougét Carter discuss Prime Video’s ‘MASTER’ written and directed by Mariama Diallo and starring Regina Hall. The film also stars Amber Gray (The Underground Railroad, Hadestown) and Zoe Renee (Jinn, Black Lightning). Watch Rewind with Ellen ep. 19 below!
Three women strive to find their place at an elite Northeastern university as old as the country. When anonymous racist attacks target a Black freshman — who insists she is being haunted by ghosts of the school’s past — each woman must determine where the real menace lies.
Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), just instated as “Master,” a dean of students, discovers what lies behind the school’s immaculate facade; first-year student Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) confronts a new home that is cold and unwelcoming; and literature professor Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) collides with colleagues who question her right to belong. Navigating politics and privilege, they encounter increasingly terrifying manifestations of the school’s haunted past… and present.
Diallo modeled the fictitious Ancaster college on the school she attended. A school that once used the term “Master,” which is associated with slavery and oppression, to address the head of a college.
In a Sundance Q&A with Diallo, she stated: “part of the process of writing and making this film was asking some tough questions of myself; of how I was able to sustain four years of my life where I accepted this person into my life — at the very least with that title. What did it mean and why did it happen? Why didn’t I wake up?”
Mariama Diallo is a Brooklyn-based writer-director. Previous work includes the short films Hair Wolf (Sundance 2018) and White Devil (TIFF 2021), as well as HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. She has been featured in Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch and Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
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