Directed by Jessica Beshir • 2017 • Ethiopia

Yussuf Mume Saleh journeys nightly into the outskirts of the walled city of Harar to bond with his beloved hyenas, a ritual he has practiced for over thirty-five years. Shot in black and white, HAIRAT is a meditation on this uniquely symbiotic relatio...

Directed by Ekwa Msangi • 2020 • United States
Starring Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, Jayme Lawson

In her luminous feature debut, filmmaker Ekwa Msangi chronicles a broken family’s journey to wholeness with empathy and insight. Seventeen years after his family was separated by the civil wa...

Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
Starring Jason Holliday

On the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. For twelve straight hours, they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang,...

Directed by Menelik Shabazz • 1981 • United Kingdom
Starring Cassie McFarlane, Victor Romero Evans, Beverley Martin

Made in 1981, the first feature by the pioneering Barbados-born British filmmaker Menelik Shabazz marked a coming-of-age for Black British cinema. This hard-edged, wholly absorbing...

Directed by Adepero Oduye • 2017 • United States
Starring Adepero Oduye

In this soul-stirring short featuring stunning cinematography from Bradford Young, PARIAH actor Adepero Oduye takes the stage as the great Nina Simone for an intimate, defiant performance.

Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis • 1999 • United States
Starring John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb

A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and...

Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1968 • Senegal
Starring Makuredia Guey, Yunus Ndiaye, Isseu Niang

This second feature by Ousmane Sembène was the first movie ever made in the Wolof language—a major step toward the realization of the trailblazing Senegalese filmmaker’s dream of creating a cinema by,...

Directed by Clement Virgo • 1995 • Canada
Starring Maurice Dean Wint, Rachael Crawford, Clark Johnson

Jamaican Canadian director Clement Virgo’s landmark debut—the first Canadian dramatic feature made by an entirely Black crew—is a searing, poetic portrait of marginalized souls fighting to overc...

Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...

Directed by William Greaves • 1968 • United States
Starring William Greaves, Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE, the pioneering William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving...

Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

Directed by Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri • 2020 • Nigeria
Starring Jude Akuwudike, Temi Ami-Williams, Tomiwa Edun

This revelatory, award-winning debut feature from codirec­tors (and twin brothers) Arie and Chuko Esiri is a heartrending and hopeful portrait of everyday human endurance in Lagos, Nig...

Directed by Horace Jenkins • 1982 • United States
Starring Richard Romain, Tommye Myrick, Carol Sutton

Written, produced, and directed by the late, trailblazing director Horace B. Jenkins and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, this luminous, recently rediscovered landmark of ...

Directed by Julie Dash • 1991 • United States
Starring Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbara O. Jones

Julie Dash’s rapturous vision of black womanhood and vanishing ways of life in the turn-of-the-century South was the first film directed by an African American woman to receive a wide release. In ...

Directed by Dwayne LeBlanc • 2022 • United States
Starring Barrington Darius

This graceful, deeply atmospheric short follows Booker (Barrington Darius) as he returns to South Central LA after several years away. Confined to the interior of his car, we watch as he interacts with the people and pl...