Bittersweet: Oscar Grant’s Daughter Anticpates The Release Of “Fruitvale Station”

Hopefully, by now news of the movie Fruitvale Station has crossed your radar. Fruitvale details the last day of Oscar Grant’s life before he was shot and killed by a BART police officer in Oakland, California in 2009.

If you’ve seen trailers from the movie, you know that Oscar, who’s portrayed by Michael B. Jordan (“The Wire”, Red Tails), was actively involved in his daughter’s life, even telling Johannes Mehserle  the police officer that killed him, that he had a four year old daughter, moments after he was shot.

That was four years ago. And Grant’s daughter Tatiana is 8 now.

A local Oakland news station, KTVU.com, recently caught up with Tatiana to see how she’s preparing for the film’s upcoming release. They found that during a block party the young Grant was handing out movie posters and fliers promoting the film that tells a bit of she and her father’s story.

She told KTVU, “It makes me happy. Because I never had so many posters about my dad.”

Indeed, the image on the posters don’t allude to Oscar’s tragic fate, instead it’s an image of “Oscar” and “Tatiana” (played by Ariana Neal) holding each other’s hands, their backs facing the viewer.

While Tatiana is excited about the release of the film, her family is not going to allow her to see it until she’s at least a teenager.

Fruitvale Station, though it hasn’t been released in theaters yet, has already received critical acclaim winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the “Best First Film” award for director Ryan Coogler at the Cannes Film Festival.

Fruitvale Station will be released in select theaters tomorrow, July 12 and then nationwide on July 26.

Watch the interview with Tatiana and her aunt here.