Writer-Director Barry Jenkins Still photography by David Bornfriend/Courtesy of Strike Anywhere Films

Named after a collection of Ray Bradbury short stories, first-time San Franciscan filmmaker Barry Jenkins's enlightened and tenderly beautiful drama Medicine for Melancholy launches from an old Bradbury adage: "Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day." Here, a couple of African-American coolsters are introduced at a party on the groggy morning after their one-night stand. They silently brush their teeth with their fingers, walk out to the hilly streets, share an awkward breakfast together, and just when you think lovely, headstrong Jo' (Tracey Heggins) wants nothing more to do with the charmingly laid-back Micah (Wyatt Cenac), their fleeting meet-cute lasts just a bit longer than planned. But what makes the film so impressive isn't merely how compelling and palpable their chemistry is — which alone wouldn't warrant such gushy praise — nor is it enough to mention its stunning HD images, meaningfully desaturated to olive-and-pastel-tinted grays. No, it's how smart and socially progressive Jenkins proves to be in provoking questions about the black experience within the San Francisco indie scene, richly fleshing out the internal dilemmas of two opinionated characters through their ideas of racial identity, gentrification and class struggles. I spoke with Jenkins in Austin over a Tex-Mex lunch (Guerro's, always delicious!) about his feature debut, easily my favorite film at SXSW 2008.

What path led you to make your first feature?
I never wanted to be a filmmaker growing up. There just happened to be a film school on campus where I went to college. The whole crew went to Florida State, we all met there. After film school, I moved to L.A. for two years, worked for [Oprah Winfrey's production company] Harpo, and wasn't really enjoying that. So I quit my job, moved to San Francisco, and really thought I was done as a filmmaker. I hadn't written or directed anything in about four years. Then I went through this breakup, [during which] I had all these really ridiculous thoughts, and I thought I could channel them into a character.

Yet you wrote not one, but two characters with somewhat conflicting ideologies. How much overlap is there between your own beliefs and those of Jo' or Micah?
I have this argument with myself that revolves around my identity as a black man who spends most of his time living in a quote-unquote "white world," just in the film and arts scene, or listening to indie music, shit like that. So sometimes I've felt like Micah, this guy who wants to be comfortable with being black, whatever the hell his hangup is. Then there's Jo', who is completely progressive, and who acknowledges that she is black, but it's not a point of reference for her as she goes through her daily life. She's moved beyond it. The film is kind of like these two sides of this conversation that I've had with myself over the last two or three years. And it was scary to put that into a film, because you think, "Are the characters going to be characters? Are they just going to seem like the director putting two theses together and having them battle it out?" I think it comes across pretty well onscreen.