Black Mother

2018, 77 minutes, Digital
USA

Director: Khalik Allah

Distributor: Grasshopper Film

Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.

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“Gliding from color to black and white, from digital to analog, from grim realism to spiritual ecstasy, the film offers a song of praise to the island of Jamaica and a reckoning with its painful history and hard-pressed present.”
— A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“A thrilling, hallucinatory portrait of Jamaican life and history.”
— Sight & Sound

“Black Mother is the beginning of a brand of Black auteurism exhibited by Allah and his contemporaries.”
— Tayler Montague, Reverse Shot

“A visionary filmmaker. Dazzling cinematic poetry.”
— Eric Kohn, IndieWire

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