In a small office cluttered with books and other detritus of the writer's life, filmmaker Alexandre Westphal and the writer Percival Everett explore his work. Archival images are projected onto the walls, invading the space and intermingling with Everett's text, to illuminate many of the myriad and fascinating ways that his books reveal contemporary America to itself.

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

An ex-marine, in search of some defining life direction, unexpectedly faces a hurdle when his jeep breaks down in a sparsely populated Wyoming town. While waiting for parts to repair the vehicle he takes a temporary job as a rest area attendant and moves onto a ranch run by a one-legged widow with a mentally handicapped son. When an abandoned Vietnamese girl joins the group, the scene is ready for confrontation and tragedy.

“James” reframes the classic story of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, an enslaved man who floats down the Mississippi River with teenaged Finn, a good friend of Tom Sawyer. While many set-pieces from the original story remain in place in this re-imagining, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.