Set to the backdrop of her suburban town’s evacuation, thirteen-year old Nora enlists the help of the boy next door to search for her apathetic big sister, who has snuck out to party with an older boy with questionable intentions.
Polly tries to avoid a confrontation with her roommate, tiptoeing around the mess in a kitchen that proves to be much too small for more than one person. The walls are too white, her anxiety is too great, and finally she feels too claustrophobic to stay inside. In a noisy and anonymous city, Polly let’s herself be carried by a train that moves in circles, without a particular goal, daydreaming away while the world rushes by her.
Based on the poetry cycle of the esteemed African-American poet Cornelius Eady, the film is inspired by the work of Phillis Wheatley, the first published black poet in the US. “Mercy” aims to weave Wheatley's poetry and imagery, which focuses on the complication of the slave learning their captor's language, with gesture, movement and voice into an intricate meditation on black womanhood.
