Black Contemporary Filmmakers

Despite the systemic inequalities of the Hollywood system, there is a robust, stylistically diverse cohort of African-American writer/directors at work, including Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Jenkins' films (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), are aesthetically lush, intimate, and understated. DuVernay (When They See Us) foregrounds racial history and injustice in her feature films, television, and documentary work. Coogler followed his realist Fruitvale Station with two powerful genre films with black protagonists (Creed, Black Panther - this last the highest-grossing film by a black director).