18 Wonderful Films About Black Girlhood and the Coming-of-Age Experience

For many of us, cinema is an awakening. It is revelatory in that it can showcase what is possible. The moving image acts as a mirror, showing us who we are and giving us glimpses of who we could be. But what happens when you can’t see yourself?

In a 2019 study, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media examined the representation of Black women in Hollywood. The organization determined that while Black girls and women are 6.5 percent of the U.S. population, only 3.7 percent of leads/co-leads in the 100 top-grossing films of the last decade fit that demographic. In short, for Black girls and teens, seeing themselves on screen is still a rarity.

As young women and girls have fought for representation in the cinema landscape for decades, Hollywood has offered up stories of pretty, posh girls like Alicia Silverstone’s Cher in “Clueless” or fierce warriors like Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games” franchise. Like many others, Black teen girls have felt a kinship with these figures, or have seen themselves in Cher’s best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) or the brave young tribute Rue (Amandla Stenberg) whom Katniss befriends.

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Perfectly Imperfect: 6 Layered Black Women Moving TV Forward

Respectability has been a pillar of Black American culture since Emancipation. Since Black people arrived on the shores of America, we have been subjected to hardships and cruelties based solely on our skin color. For centuries we’ve combated horrible stereotypes in our everyday lives and American popular culture. For Black women, in particular, being anything other than docile and likable meant that you could be seen as masculine, mean, overly sexual, asexual, and conniving. These terms were weaponized against Black people by outsiders and insiders like W.E.B Dubois, who touted his talented tenth, the most educated of the race, as the epitome of “good” Blackness and the embattled Bill Cosby with his “perfect” portrayal of the Black family in “The Cosby Show.”

Though respectability has been lauded as a tool for full citizenship in the Black community, it’s a falsehood. More than that, the performance of likability is exhausting. It forces a constant state of people-pleasing, one that often requires self-betrayal. Respectability won’t cause those who cling to their hatred, anti-Blackness, and racism to throw away their long-seated feelings of anger and disgust. It certainly won’t alleviate misogynoir. 

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10 BLACK WOMEN FILMMAKERS WHO SHAPED THE CINEMA LANDSCAPE OF THE 20TH CENTURY

As representation has expanded for Black women in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera, it might appear to some that Black women only recently began contributing to the cinema landscape. As we praise prolific directors like Ava DuVernay, Kasi Lemmons, and Gina Prince-Bythewood for their stunning films, which offer varied views of Black womanhood, it might seem as though there was a scarcity of Black women directors who preceded them. However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Oscar Micheaux is noted as the most prolific Black American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. The 1980s and 1990s paved the way for a new generation of Black male filmmakers like Spike Lee, John Singleton, and countless others, gaining the recognition they deserved for their gritty and telling depictions of Black manhood in the inner city. As a result, the contributions of Black women before and during this period have nearly been erased.

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'Godfather Of Harlem' Season 3: Forest Whitaker On Embodying Bumpy's Code, Having A New Actor For Malcolm X And More

Harlem stood out like a glittering jewel when America was at war with itself. It became a Mecca for Black people who wanted to live, thrive, and love away from oppressive racism. Harlem was never perfect, but for many decades it was ours. Inspired by the real-life crime boss 

Godfather of Harlem, is an excellent gangster drama that centers on a rapidly changing nation, an expansive Black community, and a man that, for better or worse, held Harlem in his hand. 

Starring Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker as Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson,, Godfather of Harlem’s third season, will find Bumpy at a crossroads. With his massive shipment of heroin set ablaze amid the July 1964 Harlem riots, Bumpy is out of resources, and as always, the Italian mob is encroaching on his territory. With his reputation, family, and community hanging in the balance, Bumpy will be forced to seek new alliances.

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'The Stroll' Review: Is A Beautifully Frank Documentary About Trans Sex Workers and The City Who Tried To Erase Them (Sundance)

There have been several films about the transgender community in New York. Paris Is Burning and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson are just two films that remain topical. However, a Black transwoman is rarely at the helm of these films, turning the lens on herself and history, enabling her to take back her narrative. With The Stroll, actress/ activist Kristen Lovell and her co-director, Zackary Drucker, examine the decade Lovell spent on The Stroll. This was a strip in New York City’s Meatpacking District on 14th street between Ninth Avenue and the Hudson River. From the 1970s until the beginning of the 21st century, transgender sex workers worked, lived, and died on The Stroll until it was paved over and erased. 

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'Kokomo City' Review: D. Smith's Doc, Which Centers Black Trans Women, Is Refreshingly Frank (Sundance)

Black transgender women are dying at astronomical rates, typically at the hands of Black men. However, no one talks directly to them about their experiences. With her directorial debut Kokomo City, Grammy-nominated producer, singer and songwriter D. Smith is turning her lens on Black trans women. These sex workers, living and working in New York City and Georgia, share stories about their upbringing, aspirations, violence and everything in between. 

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'A Thousand And One' Review: Teyana Taylor In A.V. Rockwell's Stunningly Honest Portrait Of One Woman's Fight To Give Her Son A Better Life (Sundance)

Since times of enslavement, it’s been up to Black women to piece together homes for their children— homes often made out of nothing but full of love. A.V. Rockwell’s profound debut feature, A Thousand and One, centers on 22-year-old Inez (an outstanding Teyana Taylor). Set in the early ’90s, Inez has been recently released from prison and thrust back onto the streets of Brooklyn. Determined to stop the scheming that got her incarcerated, she tries to restore her relationship with her timid 6-year-old son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola). After being abandoned on the street corner and pushed into the foster care system, Terry is initially distrustful of his mother. However, after he has an accident in his group home and lands in the hospital, the aspiring hairstylist decides to kidnap her son out of the foster care system, determined to give him the home she never had growing up.

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'All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt' Review: Raven Jackson's Feature Debut Is A Visual Masterwork With Very Few Answers (Sundance)

Some films aren’t actually films. Instead, they are still portraits that come to life. A homage to Julie Dash’s 1991 film, Daughters of the Dust, Raven Jackson’s deeply textured film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt follows Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson and later Charleen McClure), a Black woman growing up in the late 1960s in Mississippi across four decades in her life. Jackson chooses not to orient her film in time or place. Instead, the non-linear feature, with its very sparse dialogue, forces the viewer to piece together Mack’s life experiences for themselves. 

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'Little Richard: I Am Everything' Demands To Be Seen (Sundance Review)

Society uses labels like Black, queer, disabled, or anything outside the “norm” to cast aside individuals. It’s easy to ignore people perceived as invisible, pushed into the shadows, or hidden away. However, some people burn so brightly that the labeling and the casting aside only make them shine brighter. No matter how society marked him, Richard Wayne Penniman, aka Little Richard, demanded to be witnessed. In her electric documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, on the originator of rock n’ roll, Lisa Cortés shines a spotlight on the mesmerizing musician whose complex legacy is infused in the DNA of American popular music. 

Typically when legendary figures are given the documentary treatment, the audience goes in knowing quite a bit about them. But so much of Little Richard‘s legacy had been whitewashed and wallpapered over that every scene felt like peeling back the history of the music industry and American society. 

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'The Best Man: The Final Chapters' Stars And Creators On Mid-Life Revelations And Saying Goodbye

Nearly 25 years after we were introduced to The Best Man, and almost a decade after The Best Man Holiday, Malcolm D. Lee is saying goodbye to his beloved franchise. The Best Man: The Final Chapters catches up with Harper (Taye Diggs), Robyn (Sanaa Lathan), Jordan (Nia Long), Lance (Morris Chestnut), Quentin (Terrence Howard), Shelby (Melissa De Sousa), Candace (Regina Hall), and Murch (Harold Perrineau). 

Picking up shortly after the events of The Best Man Holiday and closing in 2024, Peacock’s The Best Man: The Final Chapters will examine the close-knit friend group as they navigate relationships, past grievances, mid-life revelations, and crossroads. Ahead of The Final Chapters‘ eight-episode debut, Shadow and Act sat down to speak with Lee, co-showrunner Dayna Lynne North and the cast members about finishing the story, the evolution of the cast and saying goodbye. 

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'Riches' Creator And Cast Dive Into Prime Video's Deliciously Bingeable Black Family Drama

Written and created by Abby Ajayi, Prime Video’s Riches is a delicious and highly bingeable global drama series. The show follows Nina Richards (Deborah Ayorinde), whose carefully curated world in Brooklyn comes crashing around her when she learns that her estranged father, Stephen Richards (Hugh Quarshie), has died unexpectedly. Convinced by her brother Simon (Emmanual Imani) to attend their father’s funeral in the U.K., Nina realizes that the late mogul has left more than a few loose ends. 

Upon landing in the U.K. and encountering their hostile stepmother, Claudia (Sarah Niles), and half-siblings, Gus (Ola Orebiyi), Alesha (Adeyinka Akinrinade), and Wanda (Nneka Okoye), Nina and Simon learn that their father has left his beauty empire, Flair & Glory in their hands. What happens next is more than any of the Richards — especially Nina could have expected. 

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'Kindred' Creator And Star On Reimaging Octavia Butler's Iconic Story For New FX Series On Hulu: 'A Lot Of Rigor'

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new FX series Kindred is a 21st-century adaptation of Octavia Butler’s iconic sci-fi novel. It’s a haunting show about a modern-day Black woman who is continually snatched back and forth through time from her home in 2016 Los Angeles to a Southern plantation in 1815. 

In her first leading role, Juilliard graduate Mallori Johnson portrays Dana James, an aspiring TV writer trying to find her place in the world after her grandmother’s death. However, just as she begins to settle into her new home in LA, she is violently ripped from the present and thrust into the past, a place that has intrinsic links to her bloodline. 

Ahead of Kindred’s Dec. 13 premiere, Shadow and Act sat down to chat with Jacob-Jenkins and Johnson about the beauty of Butler’s work, updating the story, and why it’s never been more relevant. 

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Marsai Martin: Heir To Black Hollywood

Marsai Martin knows exactly who she is. Though her dewy skin, bright smile, and deep dimples give away her sparkling youth, Marsai’s spirit isn’t bogged down with the uncertainty of teenhood. The 18-year-old carries a sense of self many people don’t embody until at least the third decade of their lives. The black-ish alum certainly hasn’t had the typical upbringing, but her parents, Joshua and Carol Martin, have always been loving anchors for her —her bridges to normalcy. Marsai’s confidence is why she has no problem taking up space. 

Marsai’s eight-year stint on black-ish came to a close earlier this year. However, the Genius Entertainment Productions Founder has yet to slow down. You don’t become the youngest person to ever produce a movie by being complacent. Her latest film, Fantasy Football, where she stars alongside Omari Hardwick, Kelly Rowland, and Rome Flynn, will debut on Paramount+ on November 25. The film was initially written as a father/son story. However, things changed when Marsai joined the project as an executive producer and star. 

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From 'Devotion' To 'Shirley,' This Is Christina Jackson's Moment

Christina Jackson’s acting career was a happy accident. Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, she had no interest in sports, but her love of reading prompted her seventh-grade teacher to suggest the drama club. “The first play, I played Frenchy in Grease, and I was terrible because I was so nervous,” she tells ESSENCE. “I vowed I would never let that happen again.” After learning to work through her nerves, Jackson embraced the energy of the theater. “You can hear the laughs. You can hear the tears —the sniffles,” she reflects. “You can hear everything in real-time, even though you’re supposed to block all of that out. I think there’s something very connected about theater.”

Those first plays in elementary school invigorated The Good Fight actress’s love of storytelling. For over a decade, she’s worked on series like Outsiders, Boardwalk Empire and Deception. But now, in her upcoming role in the war epic Devotion, where she stars opposite Jonathan Majors, Jackson is starting to feel a fundamental shift. 

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'Wakanda Forever' examines grief and rage in a powerful way

A stunning tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” begins with the death of his character, T’Challa. Desperate to save her brother from the illness that has consumed him, a frantic Shuri (Letitia Wright) flits around her science lab, attempting to unearth the antidote that might save the Wakandan king. Tragically, her efforts are fruitless. Before the opening credits roll on the film, a despondent Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) tells her last living child, “Your brother is with the ancestors.”

The real-world trauma of Boseman’s shocking death from colon cancer in August 2020 collides with the aftermath of his character’s passing in “Wakanda Forever.” It’s an action-packed film full of grief, rage and the towering burden of legacy. His spirit stands at the film’s center as director Ryan Coogler examines why rage and trauma can be both a determinant and a pillar to communities of color. 

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A Decade Later, Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson Reflect On “American Promise

Education has always been seen as a golden ticket in this country. In 2015, the Schott Foundation for Public Education released a disheartening report stating that only 59% of Black males graduated from high school in the United States. While Black girls — who share many of the same risks as their male counterparts — have fared better on average in the U.S. education system, anti-Black racism in our schools is failing Black boys. 

Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, a Harvard-and Stanford–trained psychiatrist and a Columbia Law School graduate and filmmaker, respectively, knew the statistics. As their son, Idris Brewster prepared to enter kindergarten; the couple knew they needed to take charge of his education. The Dalton School — a private, predominantly white school located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — seemed to offer avenues for the brightest future for Idris. After being criticized for its lack of diversity, the school was actively seeking Black and brown students.  

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'Till' lays bare a palpable fear of Black mothers in white America

The story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy kidnapped and brutally murdered in Mississippi by two white men before they dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River in 1955, is not new. That level of racist vileness has been experienced by victims who came before and after the bright-eyed Chicago boy’s time, echoing recently in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery. 

Yet, in “Till,” filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu offers viewers a different window into Emmett’s life through the perspective of his poised and graceful mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler). 

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'Is That Black Enough For You?!?' Is A Powerful Examination of Black Film Representation That Will Leave You Wanting More [NYFF Review]

Black films have existed since the silent era. Filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux and later Spencer Williams worked tirelessly to write, direct and represent Black life on screen. However, amid unbridled anti-Blackness and the Jim Crow era, Hollywood studios, who owned the biggest movie houses at the time, locked Black films out of their cinemas. White writers, directors and producers of that era had their own ideas about Black life — ones that were riddled with demeaning stereotypes and degrading roles. 

Yet, as film scholar and historian Elvis Mitchell describes in his dense but riveting film essay, Is That Black Enough For You?!?, racism didn’t stop Black people from falling in love with movies. Nor did it stop the deep yearning within many of them, Mitchell included, from wanting to see themselves represented on the big screen. 

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For Danielle Deadwyler, Black Women Define Legacy

Black women are central to Danielle Deadwyler’s artistry. Just days before the debut of the highly-anticipated historical drama Till, the actress is enjoying a moment of calm. In the movie, Deadwyler stars as activist Mamie Till-Mobley, whose 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, was kidnapped and lynched in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. The film, helmed by Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu, is already getting awards buzz, which means a whirlwind is certainly on the horizon for Deadwyler.

For now, the Atlanta-born actress is reflecting on Maime’s story and the stories of every woman she’s embodied throughout her career. From Cuffee in The Harder They Fall to Yoli in P-Valley, these Black women and their stories have all been puzzle pieces in the foundation of Deadwyler’s life’s work. 

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“The Spectacular Now” and the First Loves That Gutted Us

At 16, when I told my mother I was in love with my first boyfriend, she scoffed at me. Her pitying look did nothing but enrage me and propelled me to distance myself further from her, burying myself headfirst into my teen angst. I know now that my mother’s reaction came from the outcome of her own teenage love affairs and her desire for me to focus on my dreams and aspirations instead of some boy. The inner lives of teenagers have always been of interest in our society, but teenage love affairs are often genuinely heartbreaking to the adolescents inside them.

As a smack-dab-in-the-middle millennial, I gravitated toward teen romance flicks like Clueless, She’s All That, and Crazy/Beautiful. I admired Cher’s (Alicia Silverstone) chic wardrobe and was enthralled with the chaos of Nicole’s (Kirsten Dunst) mental anguish. But none of that felt familiar or even real to me. These glamorous California teens were a world away from the South Side of Chicago. There were a few films like A Walk to Remember and Save the Last Dance that felt more tangible to my experiences. Like Mandy Moore’s character in the 2002 Adam Shakman film, my mother began battling cancer when I was 18, succumbing to the disease when I was 20. 

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