My Father and the Man in Black

In My Father and the Man in Black director Jonathan Holiff goes searching for meaning after his father Saul’s suicide left him with unanswered questions and a newly discovered stash of diary notes and audio recordings. A businessman and music lover, Saul Holiff was the longtime manager of Johnny Cash, partnering with the music legend from 1960 to 1973, a prolific period in the artist’s career that included the famed live recordings at Folsom and San Quentin prisons, before dissolving the relationship with bitter resentment. Utilizing an impressive array of found footage, recreations, letters and audio-taped journals from his late father, Holiff reconstructs his own forgotten childhood memories while making sense of some little-known behind-the-scenes stories during Cash’s career and the toll it took on his own family. Exposing flawed characters on both sides, Holiff’s poignant examination of the fruitful, yet tumultuous relationship between Johnny and Saul not only sheds light on the life of the man behind the man, but also exorcises relationship issues between an austere father who could not escape from the shadow of the star, and a son who could never measure up to the challenges of adulthood.