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Black history is just history, and these Prime Video films and series prove it
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items October is Black History Month in Europe, so I wanted to share a watchlist of films and series that you should watch (again) this month. Quick confession first. I haven't seen all of these yet. I picked them because the stories matter. Personally I f...
The story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, the Black women whose maths helped send John Glenn into orbit. It matters because for decades their names were left out of the space race story. A great one to put on for the whole fam...
Hidden Figures
Ava DuVernay's film about the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery. It matters because it shows how much risk and organising it took to secure a right that should never have been in question. It is also directed by a Black woman, which...
Selma
Kasi Lemmons directs the story of Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery and then went back again and again to lead others to freedom. It matters because it treats her as the extraordinary strategist she was, not just a name from a school textbook.
Harriet
Chinonye Chukwu's film about Mamie Till Mobley and her decision to hold an open casket funeral for her son Emmett in 1955. It matters because her courage turned private grief into a national reckoning. It is heavy, so I would pick the right moment fo...
Till
Based on Bryan Stevenson's work defending people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Alabama. It matters because it shows that the fight for fairness in the justice system is not a thing of the past.
Just Mercy
Inspired by the real life of Eugene Allen, who served as a White House butler under several presidents. It matters because it follows decades of civil rights history through one family, from the quiet dignity of the job to the protests outside.
Lee Daniels' The Butler
Spike Lee's epic about Malcolm X, from his early years through to his assassination in 1965. It matters because it shows a complicated, evolving leader in full, not reduced to a single slogan or a single chapter of his life.
Malcolm X
Raoul Peck's documentary, built from the words of James Baldwin, traces the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It matters because what Baldwin wrote about race in America still lands today.
I Am Not Your Negro
Barry Jenkins adapts Colson Whitehead's novel, where the Underground Railroad is a real railway running beneath the American South. It is a Prime Original series and it is fiction, but it matters because it makes both the horror and the hope of escap...
The Underground Railroad
Barry Jenkins' film about a young Black man growing up in Miami, told in three chapters. It matters because it won the Oscar for Best Picture and showed that Black stories told with care and tenderness can reach everyone.
Moonlight
Barry Jenkins adapts James Baldwin's novel about a young couple in 1970s Harlem fighting to clear the name of a man who has been wrongly accused. It matters because it is a love story and a story about injustice at the same time, and the film never s...
If Beale Street Could Talk
Denzel Washington directs and stars in August Wilson's play about a father and his family in 1950s Pittsburgh. It matters because Wilson wrote some of the most honest family drama about Black American life, and here it is on screen.
Fences
A Prime Original series created by Tracy Oliver, following four close friends in New York. It matters because Black stories do not always have to be about struggle. This one is simply about friendship, work and love, and that deserves a place on the ...
Harlem
Melina Matsoukas directs a film about a couple whose first date goes terribly wrong after a traffic stop. It matters because it asks hard questions about how Black people are policed in America, and it is made by a Black woman behind the camera.
Queen & Slim