DETROIT (2017) – Director Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to the hunt-for-bin Laden film ZERO DARK THIRTY covers a different type of terrorism as police violently detain a group comprised mostly of young African-American males at the Algiers Motel one night during racially-charged riots in 1967 Detroit. A haunting and harrowing experience, this historically-based film stays with you long after viewing. 

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) – Spike Lee’s polemic on racism and police brutality set on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn, New York, is incendiary, profane (this is definitely not recommended for everyone), and powerfully relevant even more than 30 years after its release. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE.

FRUITVALE STATION (2013) – In one of the first police killings captured on a cell phone, 22-year-old African-American Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a white Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer in Oakland, CA during the first hours of New Year’s Day 2009. This is the story of his last day alive, portrayed with astounding depth and humanity by Michael B. Jordan in Ryan Coogler’s impressive feature film debut.

GLORY (1989) – The story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the Union Army’s second African-American regiment in the United States’ Civil War, was marketed as a white savior narrative but manages to transcend that narrative through the unforgettable performances of Denzel Washington, Andre Braugher, and Morgan Freeman as three of the soldiers. (Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actor – Denzel Washington)

MALCOLM X (1992) – The most epic and confident direction of Spike Lee’s career and the most committed and transformative acting of Denzel Washington’s career converge in this monumental biography of the titular African-American leader.

ROSEWOOD (1997) – Based on the actual 1923 massacre in the middle-class African-American town of Rosewood, FL, John Singleton’s underappreciated film depicts the bloody response following a white woman’s false claims that she was assaulted by a black man. 

SELMA (2014)– This film covers one seismic chapter in the life of one of the most purposeful lives of the 20th century. British actor David Oyelowo portrays Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., as he leads the March 1965 protest march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in favor of equal voting rights for black Americans.

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE (2013) – Personally, I’m tired of slave narratives in film, but this true story of a free black man named Solomon Northup who was kidnapped in upstate New York and sold into slavery is important for the light it sheds on both the insidious horrors and the casual inhumanity of America’s Original Sin. (Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress – Lupita Nyong’o, and Best Adapted Screenplay)

Alternate Pick:

JUST MERCY (2019) – This is not a Marvel film, but Michael B. Jordan portrays a superhero – Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization that provides legal representation to incarcerated individuals (most of them African-American men) who may have been denied a fair trial. The narrative centers around his appeal of the murder conviction of Walter McMillian, a black man convicted of the murder of a white woman in Alabama in 1986.

Lincoln Alabaster is a screenwriter and host of the podcast Evidence of Things Unscreened, (thingsscreened.org), a podcast on the intersection of faith and film.