Mati Diop’s Atlantics is a Senegalese ghost story about love. It’s available on Netflix.

Terence Nance’s Univitellin is a short film about two young lovers in France.

It is available here: https://vimeo.com/255644802 

Nuotama Bodomo’s Afronauts is a short film about the fictional Zambian Space Academy hoping to beat the United States to the moon in 1969.

It is based on a series of fictional photos, and a very real and cultish figure named Nkoloso.

It is here: https://vimeo.com/348304224 

Kibwe Tavares’s 2013 sci-fi short film Jonah is about two friends who discover a mythically large fish and use the fish to attract tourist and money to their seaside town.

It is available here: https://vimeo.com/58646255 

It stars Daniel Kaluuya well before Get Out.

Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not Witch is a dark comedy about a child who is taken into state custody after being convicted of witchcraft, and the use of that pretense to attract tourists and dollars.

It can be rented here:

Barry Jenkins’ sci-fi short film about remigration (the forced return of non-white immigrants) is called Remigration.

After gentrifying working class families out of San Fran, a program has been created to remigrate them.

It is here:

Phillip Youmans’ Burning Cane is a meditation on the convictions of Southern Baptists.

He is 19.

He and his film won the TriBeCa Film Festival.

It is available on Netflix.

Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods is about a North Dakota woman who reluctantly begins to sell Oxy in order to stop the foreclosure of her mother’s home.

She will next direct Jordan Peele’s Candyman.

It can be rented here:

Khalik Allah’s Black Mother is a documentary (a moving portrait?) about Jamaica, that has no narration.

It is just images and sound.

Allah’s mother is Jamaican and his father is Iranian.

It is available for rent or purchase here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/black-mother/id1456059547

RaMell Ross's Hale County is also a documentary or moving portrait, without narration.

RaMell moved to Alabama and became a basketball coach.

He forced himself to link each scene visually.

Rain, sweat, spray.

It is here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/hale-county-this-morning-this-evening/id1447405062

There is a very thin line between “I want more affirming stories” and “we don’t have any affirming stories”

and I find the latter to be incredibly offensive.

Peter Ramsay’s moving film about a young, Afro-Latino boy learning to believe in himself.

It can be rented here:

Last one.

Zinzi Evans and her husband, Ryan Coogler, are currently developing a film about a family of monster hunters set in the Harlem Renaissance.

It is called Bitter Root. It is based on the comic series of the same name.

It can be purchased: https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Root-David-F-Walker-ebook/dp/B07GX5V5RG

I lied.

Tahir Jetter’s How To Tell You’re a Douchebag, about a dating blogger, who crosses the wrong woman.

It features DeWanda Wise and Will Jackson Harper before their current fame.

It can be rented here:

But, really.

I’m done now.

Nikyatu Jusu’s tense short film Flowers, about two girls who try to set up their white teacher.

It is here: https://vimeo.com/176790862 

I am a rotten liar.

It’s just that there were two very viral threads that were asking why we don’t have any good black films and I almost had a fucking aneurysm.

Nijla Mu’min’s story Jinn of a black muslimah’s coming of age.

It can be rented here:

This is the two-pronged attack that must happen in concert.

We must fight for mass-marketed films to be inclusive and to reflect the stories we want told.

But, we must also support black filmmakers where they are: Vimeo, YouTube, @BlackStarFest, and @ABFF.

No waiting.