The sudden end to the Hollywood actors’ strike has made it possible for the Denver Film Festival to add a second, 10 a.m. Saturday screening of its opening-night centerpiece film – “American Fiction” – with supporting actor Sterling K. Brown now scheduled to appear at the Sie FilmCenter.

Brown, an Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor who also starred in “Biosphere” earlier this year, will now be presented with Denver Film’s Excellence in Acting Award and engage in a post-screening conversation moderated by writer, producer and podcast host Larry Wilmore.

As soon as the more than 60,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Performers unions went on strike July 14, their members were prohibited from promoting any of their work. That scuttled Brown’s plans to attend the Denver Film Festival’s opening-night screening of “American Fiction” on Nov. 2 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. But when the strike ended on Thursday, the scramble was on.

That a do-over has been pulled off this quickly is fairly extraordinary.

“American Fiction,” written and directed by Cord Jefferson, is a timely satire that directly confronts the country’s ongoing, awkward grappling with political correctness and its hypocritical collective attempt at “doing better” since the George Floyd police murder. It stars Jeffrey Wright as Monk, a highly educated but stalled author whose work has been deemed “not Black enough” by contemporary standards.

Monk is fed up, both with the primarily White establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes, and the larger dumbing-down of our “Bachelor”-obsessed culture that is so quick to turn utter trash into commercial gold.

To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, one that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

“It is a really smart, intelligent story that has something to say about our contemporary attitudes toward race in the United States,” says Denver Film Artistic Director Matthew Campbell.

Tickets for the added screening are on sale now for $30 at denverfilmfestival.eventive.org. The Sie FilmCenter is located at 2510 E. Colfax Ave.

In addition, actor Talia Ryder will now attend a screening of her film, “The Sweet East,” at 6:45 p.m. tonight (Friday) at the AMC9 and stay for an audience conversation. She will be presented with the Rising Star Award at the festival’s awards ceremony at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Jacquard Hotel.

“The Sweet East” is the directorial debut by Sean Price Williams, best known as a cinematographer for Alex Ross Perry and the Safdie brothers. The story follows Lillian, a high-school senior from South Carolina, as she embarks on a deranged and hilarious journey up the Eastern seaboard encountering oddballs all along the way. The film additionally screens at 8:30 p.m. Saturday (without Ryder in attendance).