The Brother from Another Planet

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) is a film written, directed and edited by John Sayles. Joe Morton stars in this dramatic comedy, set in New York City in the early 1980s, as "The Brother," an alien and escaped slave who, while fleeing "Another Planet," has crash-landed in Upper New York Harbor. Picked up as homeless, he is deposited in Harlem. The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like any other black man, except that he is mute and - ... more

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) is a film written, directed and edited by John Sayles. Joe Morton stars in this dramatic comedy, set in New York City in the early 1980s, as "The Brother," an alien and escaped slave who, while fleeing "Another Planet," has crash-landed in Upper New York Harbor. Picked up as homeless, he is deposited in Harlem. The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like any other black man, except that he is mute and - although other characters in the film never see them - his feet each have three large toes. The Brother has telekinetic powers but, unable to speak, he struggles to express himself and adjust to his new surroundings, including a stint in the Job Corps at a video arcade in Manhattan. He is chased by two white Men in Black (David Strathairn and director Sayles himself); Sayles's twist on the Men in Black concept is that instead of government agents trying to cover up alien activity, Sayles's Men in Black are also aliens, out to re-capture "The... less