120 Important Films About the Black Experience

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The Latest: In celebration of Juneteenth, we’ve added 10 more films to our list, including recent important Black films like Sinners, Nickel Boys, and American Fiction. We’ve also updated the list to be ranked by Tomatometer, check it out to see where each film landed!

By Shawn Edwards, Co-Founder, African American Film Critics Association

Cinema can be a powerful tool for education. Back in February, for Black History Month, Rotten Tomatoes’ sister site Fandango reached out to members of the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) to curate a list of 100 important films about the Black experience.

In the spirit of creating a dialogue, Rotten Tomatoes is republishing Fandango’s list, which has been updated by AAFCA members with an additional 10 titles like George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. We also arranged the movies in descending chronological order, starting with newer films like 2019’s Just Mercy with Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan and finishing with Oscar Micheaux’s ground-breaking 1919 movie, The Homesteader.

This list was designed by AAFCA members as a resource guide to connect movie watchers with more-relevant-than-ever classics like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing or powerful documentaries like the Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc, I Am Not Your Negro. To find out more about the African American Film Critics Association, visit www.aafca.com and follow @theaafca on Twitter.