11 films you should not miss at the BlackStar Film Festival

Back in 2012, when the BlackStar Film Festival debuted in Philadelphia, it was often dubbed the “Black Sundance.” Twelve years on, with its resolve to showcase films by Black, Indigenous, and brown filmmakers, the festival has long outgrown that nickname and bloomed into a prized platform and community-builder that is unlike any other film festival in the country.

The 2024 edition of the festival starts Thursday and runs through the weekend. As you peruse its lineup, here’s a list of films members of The Inquirer features team are most excited about.

Aug. 1, 2:30 p.m., Suzanne Roberts Theatre

Sex Lives of College Girls comedian Amrit Kaur stars in this mother-daughter story playing dual roles of Azra and the young version of Azra’s mother, Mariam (also portrayed by Polite Society’s Nimra Bucha), in flashbacks as we follow the coming-of-age stories of both women. Though the pair have a troubled relationship — and Azra is keeping her girlfriend a secret — they bond over their shared passion for the 1969 Bollywood film Aradhana. (The title comes from a song from the film, “Meri Sapno Ki Rani.”) It premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and was just named one of Autostraddle’s 100 best lesbian movies of all time.

— RC

Aug. 1, 7 p.m., Perelman Theater at Ensemble Arts

Philadelphia-based filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford debuted their acclaimed film Test Pattern at BlackStar in 2019 and is back this year with another world premiere for their sophomore feature, Dreams in Nightmares. A twist on 1984′s Paris, Texas, the road trip film follows three Black queer femmes in their 30s searching for their missing friend somewhere in the Midwest. You might recognize the actors from buzzy TV shows like Denée Benton (Gilded Age), Sasha Compere (Single Drunk Female), Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets), and Charlie Barnett (Russian Doll). Ford’s film will kick off the festival’s opening night.

— RC

Aug. 2, 10:30 a.m., Perelman Theater at Ensemble Arts

Fighting for land and the people behind the fight is a story that often goes overlooked in our news cycles. In Jennifer MacArthur’s feature documentary Family Tree, the filmmaker tells the story of two Black families in North Carolina who are trying to practice sustainable forestry and save their property from developers while safeguarding it against climate change. She covers the families’ growth, their interpersonal drama, and the challenges they face.

— RR

Aug. 2, 2 p.m., John and Richanda Rhoden Arts Center at PAFA

I grew up in India knowing Goa, the western Indian state, to be a favorite vacation destination. Only much later did I learn of the state’s rich history of resistance against its Portuguese colonizers. This legacy is part of filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri’s family history and he collaborates with Philly-based artist and poet Sham-e-Ali Nayeem to bring the story to life. Sanzgiri connects the dots linking the western Indian resistance to the nationalist movement of African countries that were under Portuguese rule.

I watched Two Refusals as a two-channel video installation at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year, and I am excited to see this 35-minute film version.

— BDC

Aug. 2, 6 p.m., Suzanne Roberts Theatre

Co-executive producer of Amazon’s The Boys, Anslem Richardson lends his writing and directorial talents to the fantastical drama Fractal. The 17-minute short stars The Last of Us breakout star Keivonn Woodard, who’s drawn to a mysteriously comforting creature that arrives in the midst of a tragedy. Richardson, a WGA Award nominee and HBO Access writers fellow, also enlisted child actor Lurendran Hubbard, Carlease Burke (Shameless), Malcolm Barrett (NBC’s Timeless), and others for the spellbinding project.

— EH

Aug. 2, 9 p.m., Suzanne Roberts Theatre

Driven to make films that honor her French Congolese heritage, award-winning director and La Fémis graduate Victoria Neto delivers another enthralling tale with Beyond the Door (Embrasure). The short film follows West African French student Danielle (Maryam Makosso), who rushes from her chaotic student job to take her final sociology exam. She’s assisted by a concierge named Yanis (Tarik Kariouh), who tries to unpick the dilapidated door lock that entraps Danielle inside her shoebox apartment before she’s too late for her test. Neto’s sophomore project, which follows last year’s Pema, will make its North American debut at BlackStar.

— EH

Aug. 3, 2:30 p.m., Suzanne Roberts Theatre

I am a big fan of Contessa Gayles’ work. Her 2018 film, The Feminist on Cellblock Y, about an incarcerated man in California who studied feminism and organized other incarcerated men to take a stand against toxic masculinity, blew my mind. Songs from the Hole is described as a “documentary visual album” in the festival program and I am so intrigued. The film follows James “JJ ‘88″ Jacobs, who killed a man on the streets of Los Angeles when he was 15. Now 15 years into his 40-year sentence, Jacobs takes up music in a bid to reinvent himself while incarcerated. Outside, his family rallies for his release.

The synopsis promises a “musical opus of hip hop and soul” and given Gayles’ past films that have treated their incarcerated protagonists with so much softness and dignity, I can’t wait to watch this one.

— BDC

Aug. 3, 5:30 p.m., John and Richanda Rhoden Arts Center at PAFA

In the short documentary Amma’s Pride, director Shiva Krish shares the journey of Valli as she watches her trans daughter, Srija, fall in love and fight to marry in a traditional small town in south India. The film follows Tamil Nadu’s first registered marriage between a transwoman and a cisgendered man, zooming in on Srija’s biggest supporter, Valli.

— HQ

Aug. 4, 10 a.m., John and Richanda Rhoden Arts Center at PAFA

Bye Bye Tiberias is a documentary that follows the story of Emmy-nominated actress Hiam Abbas (Ramy and Succession). Abbas left her home village of Deir Hanna in Palestine to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and sisters. Decades later, she returns to the village with her daughter, the filmmaker Lina Soualem, who seeks to understand her mother’s choices and family influence. In this intimate documentary, Soualem pieces together images from the present and past of four generations of Palestinian women and the stories they’ve kept alive despite separation.

— HQ

Aug. 4, 11 a.m., Perelman Theater at Ensemble Arts

A century ago, Black farmers owned 16- to 19-million acres of land, accounting for 14% of the nation’s farmers. Today, Black farmers make up 1% of the country’s farm owners and often struggle to receive direct loans from the federal government. In the sixth episode of the ninth season of Reel South, a curated docuseries available on PBS, documentary filmmaker Andy Sarjahani follows Tomekia White, a Ph.D researcher at the University of Arkansas, as she helps local farmers adopt climate-smart agriculture practices in a state that supplies almost half of the country’s rice production.

— HS

Aug. 4, 8 p.m., Perelman Theater at Ensemble Arts

For five years, director Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich traveled back and forth between the French island of Martinique and Paris to interview the relatives of Suzanne Césaire, the late French writer, scholar, and anticolonial and feminist activist. Césaire, who was born in Martinique, cofounded the literary magazine Tropiques with her husband, Aimé Césaire, where they and others wrote about surrealism and colonialism, and critiqued the Vichy France government, which took control of Martinique during World War II. In Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, an actress in postpartum stars in a film about Césaire’s life and tries to find meaning in the late writer’s work. This is the festival’s closing night.

— HS

BlackStar Film Festival runs Aug. 1-4. For tickets, schedules, and details, visit blackstarfest.org/festival/.