With its unique storytelling and impressive performances, Moonlight became one of the breakout hits of the past year. Even though the snafu of the Best Picture award at February’s Academy Awards is in the past, there is another surprising place that Moonlight will be celebrated – on the streets of Miami.
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A street in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood will soon go under the name “Moonlight Way”, city commissioners unveiled earlier this week.
The neighborhood has several special connections to the award-winning film, besides being where the film was set and shot. Liberty City is the hometown of both of the film’s co-writers: Barry Jenkins, who also directed the film, and Tarell Alvin McCraney, who also wrote the film’s source material, the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.
According to Audrey Edmonson, commissioner of Miami-Dade County, this honor was given to the film because of its accurate portrayal of what life is like in Liberty City.
“This movie — at least what I got from it — really depicts the life of how a lot of us were raised and what we had to go through and endure as children in the inner city,” Edmonson explained to the Miami New Times. “This goes out to children still living here in the inner city that are told they’ll never amount to anything. It shows that it doesn’t matter how you were raised or where you grew up; you can still turn out to be someone.”
