How ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ has newfound relevance today

Aaron Sorkin’s new film “The Trial of the Chicago 7” has been percolating for years, but its release this year, a year of unprecedented protest and police misconduct, gives its subject matter even greater resonance. Two of the movie’s stars, Eddie Redmayne and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, spoke to Yahoo Entertainment about the unique parallels between the movie’s story - which is based on true events - and what’s going on in society right now. “What we’ve seen this summer is its own uprising rooted in systemic racism,” Redmayne said of the protests following the killing of George Floyd. One of the most compelling, and hard-to-watch, scenes in the film is when Bobby Seale (Abdul-Mateen II) is bound and gagged in court. “It was an emotional difficulty to allow myself to be put in that situation,” he said. He added, “What [Bobby Seale] was fighting for was for his own human dignity and the decency to be recognized as a human.”