'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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'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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'Earth Mama' Review: Savanah Leaf Examines Motherhood, Shame And Longing In Directorial Debut For A24 (Sundance)

There is so much longing in motherhood. There is a deep yearning for the past and a desire for the future. For Gia (Tia Nomore), a pregnant young mother desperate to get her two older children out of foster care, the pining is nearly unbearable. 

Based on her short film, The Heart Still Hums, Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama follows Gia as she moves through the monotony of her day. She works 15 hours a week at a photo center, attends various court-ordered therapy and parenting courses, and races across town to visit her children for her weekly one-hour supervised visit. Exhaustion, guilt, and the whispers of her addiction weigh heavily on Gia, but her present circumstances seem permanent. 

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