Black Women Directors Monthly February 2025
Filmmaker Euzhan Palcy
✊🏾It’s Black History Month Y’all!✊🏾
I have to be honest with you, dear reader: January was a tough month for a multitude of reasons, and I am glad we are starting anew. Despite how cold and blustery it is in Chicago right now, February is my second favorite month of the year because it’s Black History Month. Now, of course, we here at Black Women Directors celebrate our history 365 days of the year, but it’s nice that we have this designated time to take stock of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we need to be in the future because, despite everything that’s happening, There Are Black People in the Future.
And in exciting news for my paid subscribers, starting this month, I’ll be sharing bonus posts exclusively for you: deep dives, unfiltered thoughts, and things that don’t quite fit in the main newsletter, but I want to share with you anyway. The first one drops on February 21. If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, now’s a great time to sign up.
Onwards!
✨ Black Women Directors IRL ✨
For nearly a decade, Black Women Directors (BWD) has been a digital space for discovering and amplifying the work of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers. I want to bring that work into real-world spaces through screenings, filmmaker talks, and more community events like the Chicago Film Symposium.
To make this happen, I need your help. Thanks to a fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas, I can apply for grants, but first, I need to raise at least $1,000 in donations. Grant funding will allow me to expand BWD’s offerings, creating more opportunities to celebrate and uplift the brilliant Black women and nonbinary people behind the lens. And those donations will go towards the costs of hosting and updating the BWD site as well as offsetting the costs of events I’m planning.
If BWD has ever introduced you to a filmmaker or inspired you, or if you believe in supporting underrepresented voices in film, please consider making a contribution. Regardless of the amount, every donation moves us one step closer to building something bigger together.
Thank you for being part of this journey! Your support means everything.
BWD News
Michael Rowe | Credit: Getty Images for IMDb
So this news has been out for a while, but I can’t get over how THRILLED I am that Gina Prince-Bythewood is directing the film adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone, the fantasy novel by Tomi Adeyemi. On top of that, Thuso Mbede of The Woman King and Underground Railroad fame is starring! Read more about it here.
Filmmaker Ry’n Good, who I interviewed last summer, is a Howard MFA student embarking on making her first film! View her BTS video here.
Recommended Events
**Special note** Feb. 21-22: Check out Documenting Michelle Parkerson, a two-night event showcasing several of Parkerson’s films at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Black Women Directors is proud to be a community partner of this event!
Feb. 7-8: I Am Somebody (dir: Madeline Anderson) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 7-10: Fannie’s Film (dir: Fronza Woods) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 10-11: Atlantics (dir: Mati Diop) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 10-12: Chez Jolie Coiffure (dir: Rosine Mbakam) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 12: Man Sa Yay (dir: Safi Faye) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 12-13: Kaddu Beykat (dir: Safi Faye) screening at BAM Brooklyn
Feb. 13: Mudbound (dir: Dee Rees) screening at the Chicago Cultural Center
Feb. 14: Love & Basketball (dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood) screening at BFI in London
Feb. 19: “Life Within The Lens” (multiple directors) screening at Music Box in Chicago
Feb.20: It Was All A Dream (dir: dream hampton) screening at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles
Feb. 23: The Woman King (dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood) screening at Music Box in Chicago
Filmmaker Opportunities
Film Independent Grants and Awards | Deadline: Varied
Catapult Film Fund Development Grant | Deadline: Feb. 12
Find Your People Program from Color Creative | Deadline: April 12
PROOF Film Festival | Deadline: June 1 | Use code PROOFFilmFestival25Off to get 25% off when submitting a film!
Hobnobben Film Festival | Deadline: June 1 | Use waiver code blackwomendirectorsHB25 to submit a film!
Latest Additions to the Archive
Contessa Gayles — Songs From The Hole + more films
Rachael Abigail Holder — Love, Brooklyn
Visit blackwomendirectors.co for more bios, trailers, film synopses, and streaming information!
BWD Recommended Viewing
Love, Brooklyn (2025) director: Rachael Abigail Holder
I had the pleasure of watching this romantic drama during virtual Sundance last week. Starring André Holland, Nicole Beharie, and DeWanda Wise, Love, Brooklyn follows one man and two women as they navigate love, loss, and grief in an ever-changing city.
The film is less of a love letter to Brooklyn, which I went in expecting, and more of a character study of these three people - Roger (Holland), a writer struggling with a piece about gentrification, Casey (Beharie) a quick-witted, sometimes spiky art gallery owner, and Nicole (Wise) a massage therapist who is also a grieving widow raising a young, precocious daughter (played with a refreshing matter-of-fact-ness by Cadence Reese). In addition to struggling with his writing, Roger is also struggling with his relationships with Casey and Nicole, one representing his familiar past and one representing what could be a brilliant but unknown future.
Roger and Casey are two people who used to date and haven’t quite figured out how to let each other go as Roger embarks on a relationship with Nicole, who is not quite ready to let go of the memory of her husband, who passed away in an accident. All three need to find a way to move forward, even if it’s painful.
All three leads turn in exquisite performances, Beharie in particular. Roger, Casey, and Nicole are messy, full of neuroses and faults that make some of them sometimes downright unlikeable, but that makes them feel so real and alive. I’m paraphrasing something Beharie said in a Sundance Q&A that stuck with me - that she was asked for beats and colors that aren’t always asked of Black actresses, which is why I think this movie resonated with me the way it did.
Each character felt like someone I could know (or have known) in my life - and no one is perfect, but their flaws and motivations are also understandable, even as I was groaning and shaking my head at their missteps, Roger in particular.
In my notes, I wrote, “A man who doesn’t know what he wants is dangerous.” Have I mentioned that these characters remind me of people I have known?
There are some flaws within the movie - Love, Brooklyn could have benefitted from making the city a character in and of itself. Don’t just tell us what makes Brooklyn so unique or that its fabric is changing - show us those textures and show us how it’s changing and what that means for these characters. Also, some very interesting threads were pulled on but not fully explored - like Roger’s editor telling him, “That free moment of Black expression? That’s over” - played in a wonderfully meta twist by real-life book publisher Lisa Lucas. I would have also loved more exploration of what it means to be a Black artist and curator in 2025, five years after a “racial reckoning” that turned out to be… well…not.
But those flaws don’t sink the movie for me; it’s an enjoyable film experience, and I’m glad I got to see three great actors show their collective range of motion.
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