Sundance: ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ introduces ‘a history thats been buried in this country’ – USA TODAY

Daniel Kaluuya stars as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and Lakeith Stanfield is FBI informant William O'Neal in "Judas and the Black Messiah." USA TODAY

One man was for the people, the other for self-preservation.

"Judas and the Black Messiah"director Shaka King wanted to tell the story of two real-life figures, Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and FBI informant William O'Neal, and he sees the film (in theaters and streaming on HBO Max Feb. 12) as "an incredibly clever vessel to introduce a history that has been buried in this country to a very wide audience."

"Black Messiah," which premiered at the virtual Sundance Film Festival, centers on O'Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) avoiding a prison sentence by making a deal with the FBI in 1968 to infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and get close to Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). The chairman formed a multicultural Rainbow Coalition amid a time of social and civil unrest, andbecause he had a gift for reaching people through his words and speeches, Hampton was viewed as a threat by the government and assassinated a year later at the age of 21.

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Daniel Kaluuya (center) stars as Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who's targeted by the FBI in the period drama "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: GLEN WILSON)

Hampton's ideas "were so profound and insightful and also expressed in such a witty, often humorous but direct, sometimes even profane (and)bombastic way," King said in a Sundance live Q&A Monday night. "The opportunity to present these kinds of ideas expressed this way in a(thriller) was irresistible to me."

Kaluuya was given the Black Panther reading list and for the better part of a week, the British actor just read speeches so he could find the character's voice. What Kaluuya admired about the Black Panthers was "their love for their own, their love for Black people, their love for themselves, unapologetically. Even when they haven't seen that by the powers that be, they poured that love into their own community. They would die to protect their own and liberate their own."

To play his character, Stanfield found inspiration in the only on-camera interview O'Neal gave about his experience, for PBS' "Eyes on the Prize 2," when the interviewer asked O'Neal what hewould tell his son. (O'Neal committed suicide the day it aired in 1990.)

Lakeith Stanfield (center) plays FBI informant William O'Neal in "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: Photo provided by Warner Bros. Pictures)

"It made him stammer a bit, battling with his actual feelings of what he had done," Stanfield said. "For a second in that interview, it cracked through: Hes not a rat, hes not a snitch, hes human. He feels that (stuff)."

Dominique Fishback, who plays Hampton's fellow activist and love Deborah Johnson, kept a journal making "Judas" and wrote poems for every scene Deborah had with Fred. One of them came about when she thought about "all of the Black women losing their children to police terrorism and police brutality. To me, Im putting myself in those shoes. We sometimes think shooting a gun is revolutionary, but Its revolutionary to know that your children are on the frontline every day and you do it anyway out of love."

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. (left, with producer Charles D. King) was a cultural expert on the set of "Judas and the Black Messiah."(Photo: GLEN WILSON)

With "Black Messiah," King wants audiences to recognize the "the history of this government and country in terms of repressing voices of dissent, (past) and present, and also not believe the propaganda about the Black Panthers being thugs and criminals. Theyre feeding children and building medical clinics and ambulances and trying to prioritize the people that werent being taken care of by the government that claims to represent them.

Fred Hampton Jr., the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party Cubs, said theres a combination of emotions seeing his parents story on screen. Their partyin the 1960s was a revolutionary organization that impacted our way of life, our music, even the relationships and our dress.

Now, we serve hot meals and we serve hot politics. The Black Panther Party was there, and the Black Panther Party Cubs, we still here today.

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Sundance: 'Judas and the Black Messiah' introduces 'a history thats been buried in this country' - USA TODAY