Directed by Ngozi Onwurah • 1995 • United Kingdom
Starring Suzette Llewellyn, Saffron Burrows, Felix Joseph
Ngozi Onwurah’s radically ahead-of-its-time Afrofuturist vision WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME made history as the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman. Nevertheless, it was largely dismissed upon its release by critics unable to see the urgency in its evocation of a gritty dystopia in which Black people have been relegated to living in a slum called the Terrordome, where simmering racial tension threatens to boil over in the wake of a young boy’s death. Twenty-five years later, Onwurah’s fusion of political commentary and genre spectacle looks positively prescient, and her ability to build an entire cosmology that connects the history of slavery to present-day police brutality is nothing less than visionary.
Directed by John Akomfrah • 1996 • United Kingdom
John Akomfrah, cofounder of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, crafted this experimental blend of sci-fi parable and essay film, which also serves as an essential primer on the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary Afrofuturism. Inter...
Directed by Cauleen Smith • 2001 • United States
In this experimental hybrid between science fiction and noir, Cauleen Smith explores Black alienation and outsiderhood via the story of two aliens stationed on Earth searching for kinship and a sense of purpose.
Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo • 2005 • Cameroon
Starring Adèle Ado, Dorylia Calmel, Emile Abossolo M'bo
Cameroonian auteur Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s outré sci-fi satire is a blazingly Afrofeminist vision in which a pair of supernatural lesbian call girls use their powers to smash a futuristic Camero...
