Hillbilly Elegy

HILLBILLY ELEGY tells the story of JD Vance, a Yale Law School student from a poor White family that, two generations earlier, migrated from rural Kentucky to a factory town in Ohio in search of a brighter future. Now it's 2011, and JD (Gabriel Basso) can barely afford tuition at Yale. He doesn't quite fit in to the school's elite setting, but he's getting by with multiple part-time jobs, supportive girlfriend Usha (Freida Pinto), and the possibility of a prestigious summer internship at a D.C. law firm. But when his mother overdoses on heroin, JD has to return home, dredging up all the memories of his turbulent teen years. In 1997, his single mother, Bev (Amy Adams), rotated through a series of boyfriends and jobs and became dependent on drugs. His Mamaw (Glenn Close), herself once a teen mother abused by a husband with an alcohol dependency, largely enables her daughter's problems, but she does step in to help set JD straight. It's the first sign of a life beyond his family's seemingly inherited hardships.