Empathetic and Emotionally Layered
"The filmmakers fashion an empathetic and emotionally layered portrait of a man trying to build a future by reaching out to his past."
- The New York Times
Empathetic and Emotionally Layered
"The filmmakers fashion an empathetic and emotionally layered portrait of a man trying to build a future by reaching out to his past."
- The New York Times
IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE is now available on VOD and a variety of digital platforms. Get your copy on iTunes today!
Big Picture Theatre - Waitsfield, Vermont
Join Che "Rhymefest" Smith in Vermont for this Festival Screening of IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE! For more information and tickets, please visit http://mountaintopfilmfestival.com/.
We are honored to have been accepted to screen IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE at the Toronto Black Film Festival. Stay tuned for additional details on exact screening location and time. For more information and tickets, please visit http://torontoblackfilm.com/.
This powerful story about fatherhood, forgiveness, and personal redemption sparks conversation around critical systemic issues facing our nation today.
Bring your community together to further engage on issue areas like fatherhood, black male achievement, and the power of youth arts education. Inquire about our Educator Guide and how to host a local screening!
IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE is an emotionally gripping testament to the challenges and rewards of reconciliation and the power of family to heal not just an individual but whole communities.
Take Action
"I don't have to be the leader of the change. But I sure would like to be a part of it."
- Che 'Rhymefest' Smith
Take Action
"I don't have to be the leader of the change. But I sure would like to be a part of it."
- Che 'Rhymefest' Smith
An award-winning feature length documentary inspired by a romantic idea of family legacy, IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE follows acclaimed hip-hop artist Che "Rhymefest" Smith as he decides to purchase his father’s childhood home on Chicago’s South Side and raise his new family in the same house where his father grew up.
Through this journey, Che realizes the importance of reconnecting with his estranged father who abandoned him twenty five years ago. He finds him hiding in plain sight living as a homeless alcoholic just a few blocks away. While determined to help rehabilitate his father and forge a new legacy for his own young family, Che finds that fatherhood is more complicated than his idealized version initially allowed him to believe.
This powerful story about fatherhood, forgiveness, and personal redemption sparks conversation around critical systemic issues facing our nation today.
#ShareYourTruth
IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE demonstrates that by owning our stories and sharing our truth, we have immense power to create change. Che, Brian, and Donnie's courageously shared their stories and doing so, changed the legacy of their family. What is your story?
#ShareYourTruth
IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE demonstrates that by owning our stories and sharing our truth, we have immense power to create change. Che, Brian, and Donnie's courageously shared their stories and doing so, changed the legacy of their family. What is your story?
Music figures only tangentially in Sweet Micky for President, about The Fugees’ Pras getting into behind-the-scenes politics back in Haiti, and In My Father’s House, which has Chicago rapper Che “Rhymefest” Smith looking up the father he hasn’t seen in two decades.
Can you describe your life in just three songs? We start off with three songs by someone well known in Chicago, Che 'Rhymefest' Smith. He shares three songs that define who he is.
The first reason you should see “In My Father’s House” is because in hip-hop, nobody tells the whole truth. It’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s not something designed just to be like, ‘Look, Chicago, it’s all about guns! We’re Chiraq, it’s all about guns!’ Our story is all about overcoming the haters. This film is real hip-hop because it exposes the frauds and even the artists. That’s one reason.
This documentary goes beyond gender, race, social status, and family structure. Rhymefest, Donnie and Brian allow you to see them at their most venerable and what would seem embarrassing moments in their journey to not only getting to know each other but themselves.
The hip-hop singer and songwriter Che "Rhymefest" Smith met Kanye West when they were budding young rappers in the Chicago scene. "He came up to me and was like, 'Yo, you're one of the top rappers in the city,'" Smith says in this clip from the new documentary In My Father's House. "The one thing you're missing is tracks; you need beats and I got beats." A friendship born out of competition emerged, and Smith and West went on to co-write "Jesus Walks." In My Father's House, in theaters now, tells the story of Smith's career, its rise and fall, and his quest to reconcile with his traumatic past.
The documentary works on the level of honesty and realism. Che and Brian speak candidly about their faults and struggles and its uplifting to see them reconcile and strive for a healthy relationship, it also helps that everyone in the film is likable.
“Che’s mission to lift his father up. . .intimately demonstrates [how] health care, education and supportive housing. . .help a motivated man gain confidence and his life.” – Mora Lee Mandel, Film Foward
COMING to DVD
Jan 26
Are you a teacher or a community organizer?
Learn more about our new teaching and facilitator modules and bring the message of the IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE to your school or local community organization.
COMING to DVD
Jan 26
Are you a teacher or a community organizer?
Learn more about our new teaching and facilitator modules and bring the message of the IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE to your school or local community organization.
Each of us has immense potential and the power to inspire change. It starts with being authentic about who we are and who we’re not.
#ShareYourTruth and sign up to learn more and get involved with our campaign for change.
The Showtime network has revealed its February premieres, and, in addition to Spike Lee's new Michael Jackson documentary which examines Jackson’s career as he evolves from the lead singer of the Jackson 5 to a solo artist (which premieres at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival), is another feature-length documentary, "In My Father’s House," from Emmy-Nominated Filmmakers Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg.