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.
Up Next in Afrofuturism
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Milford Graves Full Mantis
Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford GravesThis portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...
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Dark Matters
Directed by Monique Walton • 2010 • United States
Starring Sade JonesA woman obsessed with extraterrestrials and UFO sightings begins to question her own ethnic, cultural, and planetary origins.
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The Becoming Box
Directed by Monique Walton • 2011 • United States
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a mysterious box appears in the backyard of three siblings—a portal that may offer an escape from their surroundings.
