Every year, Black History Month offers an opportunity to engage with a history that is often overlooked and reduced to a series of highlights. But, the true richness of Black History lies in the stories that don't always make the front page. What if, instead of just acknowledging this history for 28 days, we used these films not as a temporary window into a broader cultural reckoning, but as a full-fledged reminder that Black lives, stories, and contributions span well beyond a 28-day calendar. Here we are, at the intersection of history, cinema, and a cultural moment that demands more than just a passive engagement - what follows is a list of sixteen films you really shouldn't miss this Black History Month, because these films aren't just about history. They're living documents of who we are, where we've been, and, just maybe, where we could go.
Pariah (2011) Dir. Dee Rees
Dee Rees’ 2011 powerhouse film Pariah follows Alike, a seventeen year old from Brooklyn, as she navigates gender and sexual identity within the strict confines of her family. We follow Alike through love and heartbreak, while trying to exist in a world that seems to be filled with loveless relationships and lack of comfortability. Adepero Oduye’s Alike is vulnerable, curious, and wants to get her hands dirty. She wants to dress masculine, she wants to be with girls, she wants to be able to love girls - but there’s always something, someone, holding her back. She’s unapologetically her, but she’s also thousands of young women from around the world, torn between living a life they love, but being confined to something else. Rees’ feature debut stands as a landmark film of young and queer identity, touching on disapproval from family, forced religion, stigmatization even within the LGBTQ+ community, and everything in between. It’s written and molded with layers of love, something only possible because Rees herself has lived through it.
The Watermelon Woman (1996) Dir. Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye’s debut feature pays homage to the forgotten Black and Queer actresses of the early 20th century, while simultaneously capturing a genre-breaking moment in film history for queer Black artists. The film follows Cheryl, a young lesbian filmmaker, who falls into a deep dive of the elusive and forgotten "Watermelon Woman.” As the film progresses, Cheryl notices parallels within the film and her own life, a significant one being her infatuation with a white woman from Chicago. By placing herself in between a piece of art, her piece of art, and her identity, Dunye learns more about herself by looking at others who came before her. It’s this self-referential idea that became widely recognized after the film was released: the idea that across generations, time will always repeat itself. Funded by donations and an NEA grant, Dunye’s polemic fights back against the industry’s blatant stereotyping of Black women, paving the road for Queer, Black Contemporary artists who dream to be heard. Spliced together with 16mm and pre-HD video, along with mock interviews and a touch of "Dunyementary", The Watermelon Woman serves as a pivotal piece of not only cinema, but identity within the Queer and Black community.
Hair Wolf (2018) Dir. Mariama Diallo
Set against the backdrop of a gentrifying Brooklyn, the locals of a Black hair salon grapple with an ever-changing society, the forcible hijacking of not just a salon, but culture. Through humor and wit, Mariama Diallo, the Brooklyn-based writer/director, crafts a narrative that is both bittersweet and nuanced. The twelve-minute film follows hair salon staff Cami (Kara Young), Eve (Taliah Webster), and Damon (Jermaine Crawford) as they fend off Rebecca (Madeline Weinstein), a white woman obsessed with Black culture. One by one, Rebecca infiltrates the staff with a monotone, influencer-esque cadence and selfies, as she buys Blue Magic and asks for her hair to be braided. We see Cami, Eve, and Damon turn against each other at the expense of Rebecca, as they confront the harsh truths of cultural appropriation and gentrification. It’s an important message told through a humorous (but eerily realistic) lens, and a short film I’d love to see be adapted into a feature.
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) Dir. Questlove, Prod. Cora Atkinson-Inuka Bacote-Capig
First premiered at Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a film that doesn’t hold back on anything. Footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of summer concerts in 1969 that ran for six weeks, celebrating Black History and culture, had been previously stored for half a century, meaning no one had seen the footage before its release in 2021. The film documents artists from all over, from Stevie Wonder, to Nina Simone, to the 5th Dimension, to Sly & the Family Stone. Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove, curiously captures the cultural landscape that was the Summer of ‘69. It was this summer that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the moon, as well as the summer of Woodstock, which arguably ended up overshadowing the Harlem Cultural Festival (a main reason why the festival was archived or "forgotten"). But, the revolution that was never televised finally was seen, and is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+. By confronting why these cultural contributions were not only dismissed, but erased, the film insists we reckon with them now, in the context of both a broader Black struggle, and the ongoing fight for cultural recognition.
Black Panthers (1968) Dir. Agnes Varda
Black Panthers, directed by legendary documentary filmmaker Agnes Varda, follows the Black Panther Party and their community initiatives. The film gives voice to the members and leadership of the Black Panther Party, including figures like Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and other Panthers in the party’s Bay Area chapter. Stitched together with documentary footage shot by Varda herself, we see the Panthers in action, providing free breakfast to children, patrolling neighborhoods and fighting police brutality. The film not only sheds light on the party, but humanizes them. Through Varda’s lens, we see the Black Panther Party as the passionate and intelligent people that they are. In a film that is both a celebration and a critique of the ongoing struggles of racial justice, Black Panthers is a testament to the power of film as a political tool that can give a voice and platform to the Black Panther Party, who risked everything to challenge the status quo.
Hair Love (2019) Dir. Matthew A. Cherry, Everett Downing Jr., Bruce W. Smith
The act of styling hair is one that will always be intimate. But, directed by Matthew A. Cherry, this animated short isn't just about hair. Following Stephen, a father who is determined to style his young daughter Zuri's natural hair, the film tackles identity and security with physical appearance. Black hair is not just a physical feature, but a symbol of cultural identity and heritage. It has been a point of both pride and oppression - subjected to discrimination and a centuries-long imposition of Eurocentric beauty standards: rigid and hard to live by. Stephen’s journey is a testament to patience and fatherly love, and his place in the film also destigmatizes the often misunderstood role of the father in Black media. Hair Love doesn’t just remind us to appreciate our roots, but to reconsider how we view Black identity.
Portrait of Jason (1967) Dir. Shirley Clarke
Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking, challenging film Portrait of Jason, is a shocking exploration of the complexity of race and human existence. Jason Holliday, an aspiring actor, a self-proclaimed "entertainer", and a Black man, spends one night speaking directly to the camera about his life, his dreams, and everything in between. The film blurs the line between performance and reality, bringing to the surface an entirely new genre. We watch Jason oscillate between two personas: one of which is the flamboyant ‘entertainer’ that is Jason, the other that is Jason, a Black man grappling with self-doubt and systematic racism. By presenting himself to the camera raw and vulnerable, he is able to defy both racial prejudice and personal turmoil, all while offering the audience a clear understanding of what it is like to live his life. While conventional films at the time often boxed Black people into archetypes, Clarke’s film allows Jason to freely speak for himself, without the controlling gaze of mainstream media involved. This act of letting a Black man narrate his own life on his own terms - without censorship or simplification - is just one of many parts that make the film revolutionary.
Black Is... Black Ain't (1994) Dir. Marlon Riggs
If Black History Month is, in part, about understanding the breadth of Black experience, then Riggs’ film isn’t just important - it’s essential. Marlon Riggs does something deeply difficult: He asks, “What does it mean to be Black?” and answers it not by giving a singular answer, but by revealing a multiplicity, a cacophony of voices, experiences, and contradictions. Black Is… Black Ain’t challenges the idea of the label, and the fact that labels are just labels, not ever the full picture. Riggs demands that we grapple with the uncomfortability - the messiness, the contradictions, and those uncomfortable questions that can’t help but arise. The film is a direct critique of just that, and proves that culture isn’t just a single thread or path - we all come from competing voices, histories, and experiences.
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) Dir. Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is everything but simplicity and neatness, but a deep dive into the tragic realities of injustice and the pervasive effects of systematic racism. If Beale Street Could Talk is a tender and delicate love story between Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), two young Black people whose lives are ripped apart by the criminal justice system. But, this film isn’t just about the specific incident of Fonny’s wrongful conviction, but also the everyday terror that looms over Black people daily. If Beale Street Could Talk is an acknowledgement, all about seeing the ways in which we, as a society, fail to see each other, fail to recognize each other’s humanity just because the systems in place don’t allow it. Jenkins shows us that Black History isn’t something neatly wrapped up in a parade float: real history, living history, Black History is about love and joy, but also about the stories that never get to be told, and this film doesn’t let us forget that.
Paris is Burning (1990) Dir. Jennie Livingston
This near-ethereal artifact of New York City’s 1980s ballroom culture is as real and as raw as it gets. Paris is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston, takes us into a lavish and performative subculture, where people compete for trophies in categories like “Face,” “Realness,” “Old Way,” and “Vogue.” But, when you read between the lines of the film, you’ll find that what you’re actually watching is people who’ve been marginalized by society at large - by the white, heteronormative mainstream, the media that creates their own rules, space, and form of social currency. We watch as Black and Latinx queens and kings navigate the concept of "realness" while being forced to live in a world that denies their right to exist as their full selves. They have their glamour, their flash, and their fierce competition, but all as a way to cope with the brutal system they live in. Paris is Burning isn’t just “Drag” or “Vogue.” It’s history, pain, defiance, love, and survival.
The Color Purple (2023) Dir. Blitz Bazawule
Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple, the latest adaptation of Alice Walker’s seminal 1982 novel, exists at the intersection of Black History, womanhood, trauma, and transformation. The film crackles with a fierce urgency that doesn’t let you look away; it’s a brutal, unflinching look at the lives of Black women in the early 20th century, a period rife with systematic violence, abuse, and generational trauma. The film follows Celie (Fantasia Barrino) and her journey of self-love, self-definition, and liberation. Her fight is grinding and sometimes ugly, but this brings us back to why the film is so important for Black History Month: it refuses to let us forget what Black History has always been about - a struggle for autonomy, for dignity, and for self-love in the face of institutional violence.
Eve's Bayou (1997) Dir. Kasi Lemmons
Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett) is a curious and perceptive young girl, but her innocence is challenged as she learns more about her family and their dark truths, especially about her father, Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) and his infidelities. The film becomes Eve’s world - an elliptical, emotionally loaded space where she, a young girl in 1960s Louisiana, learns that love and betrayal, and innocence and guilt are often indistinguishable from one another. Writer and Director Kasi Lemmons perfectly captures the particularities of Black womanhood, revealing both the beauty and the pain of Black life without reducing it to victimhood or heroism. Eve’s Bayou stands as a reminder that Black History isn’t just about the public struggles but about the intimate, often painful, but ultimately triumphant personal stories that shape it.
One of Them Days (2025) Dir. Lawrence Lamont
At first glance, One of Them Days is easy to classify as a light comedy, a buddy film featuring two Black women - Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) - on a chaotic journey to avoid eviction. But, if you’re paying attention, there’s an undercurrent of something much more resonant. It’s about friendship, but also about survival, and how two women, despite the odds, manage to find a rhythm together amid systemic failures and the quiet desperation that often defines the day-to-day experience of marginalized lives. The film doesn’t reduce Black women to stereotypes or triumphal narratives, it shows them as they are - imperfect, complicated, and resilient.
Nickel Boys (2024) Dir. RaMell Ross
Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel, the film doesn’t just depict historical trauma; it actively drags you through it, forcing you to experience its claustrophobia. Elwood Curtis, played by Ethan Herisse, is a young man with the idealism of a hopeful dreamer, but is tragically placed in a system designed to grind that hope to dust, a 1960s Florida reform school. The film, filmed almost fully from Elwood’s perspective, traps us in a place where you can’t see the full picture, and are forced to sit with a discomfort that we’d much rather avoid. But Nickel Boys is more than just a historical piece. It’s an emotional reckoning, about violence, yes, but also the way history haunts us.
Do the Right Thing (1989) Dir. Spike Lee
Spike Lee’s masterpiece doesn’t just chronicle a day in the life of Bed-Stuy on the hottest day of the year - it breathes the tension of that day, a kind of collective pressure that’s just waiting to explode. The film builds from a simmer to a boil, drawing out the interpersonal and racial dynamics of Sal’s Pizzeria, the center of the film’s narrative universe. At the heart of it all is Mookie, played by Lee himself, whose actions (or inactions) at the film’s climax serve as a microcosm of the larger social dynamics that Do The Right Thing explores. The film doesn't offer a singular, heroic vision of morality - there’s no neat resolution here, because that’s reality. Do The Right Thing continues to show how those in power can easily manipulate the truth, all the while forcing us to wrestle with the uncomfortable truth that doing the "right" thing is a lot more complicated than it initially seems.
Hidden Figures (2016) Dir. Theodore Melfi
Hidden Figures follows three brilliant Black women - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson - as they are not just sidelined in the narrative of the space race, but actively ignored by the history we’ve been taught. There’s a quiet, persuasive anger that runs underneath, like a current of unspoken rage, as these women are forced to navigate a system designed to dismiss them. We see Katherine Johnson’s (Taraji P. Henson) mathematical genius, Dorothy Vaughan’s (Octavia Spencer) technological foresight, and Mary Jackson’s (Janelle Monáe) engineering brilliance not just as triumphs over adversity, but as everyday acts of resistance. Each of them, in their own way, claimed a space where they were told none existed. This film is a constant reminder that the "hidden" figures of history weren’t just forgotten, but actively overlooked. It calls us to remember those who have been left outside of the narrative, which is exactly why we celebrate Black History Month.
While Black History Month offers a moment to pause and reflect, it also serves as a reminder that the stories of Black life, struggle, and triumph extend far beyond the confines of February, as these films, much like the stories they depict, transcend the boundaries of a month. As we watch, we are reminded that the work of understanding, honoring, and amplifying Black voices must be a year-round commitment, and one that demands not just attention, but action. In seeking to understand, to empathize, and to remember, we are called not to simply commemorate Black History, but to recognize it - every day of the year.
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