And that generally reflects how Black women have been portrayed in movies. At first, they simply weren’t portrayed at all; then, they were given screen time only as maids or other secondary characters before graduating to stereotyped supporting roles as the strong, sassy Black friend or the Black hero’s girlfriend. Rarely are Black women seen as leading ladies, even today. Because Black women deserve to experience the full spectrum of humanity whether they’re the main character or not, here are 26 Black feminist movies that celebrate Black women in all ways.
Black feminist movies
Carmen Jones
This all-Black film earned Dorothy Dandridge an Oscar nomination for Best Actress–the first for a Black woman. Oscar Hammerstein II (one half of the musical-making duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, who brought the world The Sound of Music and The King & I) wrote the book for Carmen Jones, which is an English version of the Georges Bizet opera Carmen. Dandridge is beguiling and breathtaking in this film; it’s hard to take your eyes off her. She plays Carmen, a figure who’s ultimately a tragic one simply because of who she is—a Black feminist living in 1954. Carmen is called names for doing what she wants, having casual relationships with men and failing to be tied down to one. Dandridge and Harry Belafonte crackle in this movie together, even if his inability to accept that she’s her own woman is what drives the film to its upsetting end.
The 40 Year Old Version
Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in this light-hearted film about a playwright who has turned to teaching and is afraid she’s peaked early. She is nearing 40 reluctantly and just wants her work to be authentic and meaningful, but it doesn’t seem possible until she stumbles into rap. She decides to make a mixtape, and by accepting herself and reaching for something new, she finds her life can change in the most unexpected ways. Where to watch it: Netflix
A Ballerina’s Tale
Misty Copeland was a 13-year-old living in a motel when she took up ballet in a basketball court. Today, she is the first Black principal ballerina at a major international company. This documentary tells her inspiring story, including the time when she danced an entire show with six tibia fractures, three of which were full breaks, almost ruining her career.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
Author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and several other monumental works–including the poem And Still I Rise—MayaAngelou was a force of nature. This documentary is packed with celebs and others who are happy to talk about the famous writer; she’s on hand to talk about her own life as well.
Hidden Figures
One of the first high-profile movies to show black women in STEM careers, Hidden Figures tells the story of three very real women who worked as human computers at NASA in the early 1960s. Each of them face challenges because of their race that they must overcome. Katharine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) tries to be taken seriously as the only woman and only black person on her team, eventually playing a big role in John Glenn’s first-ever orbit around the earth. Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae)has to go to court to be able to enroll in the classes she needs to become the first black woman NASA engineer and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) has to steal a library book to learn the FORTRAN programming language and train the other black computers when she realizes machines will make human computers obsolete. It’s a tragedy that most people didn’t know about any of these women before the film, and makes you wonder who else we don’t know about.
The Color Purple
Celie, the main character in The Color Purple, was Whoopi Goldberg’s film movie role, and what a job she did with it–she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. (Oprah Winfrey earned an Oscar nomination in the supporting category as well.) While this film can sometimes feel too dreary because of the suffering the characters go through, the character arc of each woman, even Celie, bends toward something uplifting in the end. Oprah and Steven Spielberg are currently producing the film version of the musical.
Waiting to Exhale
This movie, based on Terry McMillan’s book, is about a group of four friends as they “wait to exhale” and feel comfortable in a relationship. Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon lean on one another as they deal with divorce, infidelity and relationship problems. They get angry (Bassett sets her ex’s car on fire, in one of the most memorable scenes) and they heal, but overall, this movie encourages women to stop looking for the perfect man and to be true to themselves–and a good man may arrive.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
This is another McMillan novel adaptation starring Bassett. She works too much and needs to get herself together–so she goes to Jamaica and meets Taye Diggs who shakes up her life. Knowing when to embrace something new instead of pushing it away is important to every woman.
Coffy, Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones
All three of these movies were fixtures of the so-called Blaxploitation era, and all three of them feature super tough chicks. Pam Grier is the lead in both Coffy and Foxy Brown, while “the soul sister’s answer to James Bond,” the 6’2" TamaraDobson, is Cleopatra. In Coffy, Grier plays a nurse avenging her heroin addict sister by going undercover as a prostitute; she’s back at it again in Foxy Brown, avenging a boyfriend this time. Cleopatra Jones, in contrast to Grier’s roles, was a touch more… James Bond. Jones was an undercover government agent who did modeling as a front. She had a committed relationship with her boyfriend but was also haunted by drugs in her community, pitting her against the villain Mommy (Shelley Winters). The over-the-top theatrics (Grier pulls a gun out of her afro in Foxy Brown), nudity, sexual violence (Foxy is raped by a henchman) and situations in these movies (Foxy presents a man’s genitals in a jar) are cringe-y, but no one can deny the women triumph at the end of their films. Plus Black-ish’s Jenifer Lewis did a great parody of them with Coco’sRevenge.
Jackie Brown
As problematic as Quentin Tarantino can be at times, after the enormous success of Pulp Fiction, he deliberately chose the heroine of his third film to be a middle-aged, Black woman. He’d seen Coffy and Foxy Brown, and he promised Grier that they would work together. She didn’t believe him, but turns out, when he got the rights to the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, he changed the race of the heroine and spent two years writing the movie for her. Jackie Brown devises a way to double-cross the seedy men she’s involved with, and pulls it off in Tarantino style.
The Secret Life of Bees
Lily, a 14-year-old white girl with a devastating family life, seeks out the origin of the label on a jar of honey as a way to cope with the grief of losing her mom and finds a trio of Black female beekeepers. This adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel eschews “magical negro” tropes, instead imbuing its characters with real personalities and believable motivations; they don’t compromise themselves for anyone.
Daughters of the Dust
Many people are unfamiliar with the Gullah (or Gullah Geechee) people who live on the Sea Islands off the coast of the southern United States. The islands are inhabited by the descendants of slaves and still have some of the same traditions and ways as their ancestors. Daughters of the Dust, directed by Julie Dash, set in the early 1900s, is an unusually rich movie about one day in the life of one Gullah family. The women, in particular, grapple with the decision to remain on the island or leave for the more modern mainland. There’s one word to describe this film: dreamy.
Black Panther
For a movie about a young king, Black Panther is dominated by women characters. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Okoye (DanaiGurira), Shuri (LetitiaWright), and Ramonda (Angela Bassett) influence the men around them while also acting independently of them, and they’re supremely skilled at their work. Nakia or Shuri really, really should be the next Black Panther, to be honest. Where to watch it: Disney+
Thor: Ragnarok
Even though Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie isn’t the main character of this film, she makes a major impact. She’s the only woman in the “Revengers,” which seems like the coolest gig ever, she may be pansexual/bisexual depending who you ask, and most importantly, she’s allowed to be an imperfect hero, something that often evades Black women onscreen. She drinks too much, she fights, she isn’t particularly warm and fuzzy, and that doesn’t dampen enthusiasm for her at all. Where to watch it: Disney+
Harriet
Harriet Tubman should probably have had a feature film before this one, but then who would have played her better than Cynthia Erivo? Erivo, who also won a Tony for playing Celie in the Broadway version of The Color Purple, imbues Tubman with a humanity and a heroism that makes it more than clear why this Black feminist icon has had such an impact. (Erivo also picked up an Oscar nom for her work here.)
Little
Kind-of like a remake of the Tom Hanks classic Big, Little was executive produced by a 14-year-old. Marsai Martin of Black-ish now holds a Guinness World record for being the youngest person to executive produce a film–and she stars in it, too.
The Wiz
Ok, DianaRoss is too old to be playing Dorothy here. But once you get past that, this film is a fun take on the Wizard of Oz and Ross’ Dorothy is as sweet and lively as you want a heroine to be. The secret, though, is that the villain, Evillene (MabelKing), is a scene stealer and gets a great song about not wanting to hear bad news (same, evil queen, same). Sprinkle in the sublime Lena Horne as the good witch of the North, and there’s not a shrinking violet in the bunch.
Chisholm ‘72: Unbought & Unbossed
Directed by Shola Lynch, who happens to be a Black woman, this documentary explores the campaign of the first Black woman to run for the United States presidency: a Brooklyn congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm. In 1972, Chisholm galvanized people who had not been interesting in voting and she ran an independent, progressive campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to the highest office in the land. The documentary’s title? Chisholm’s actual slogan.
What’s Love Got to Do With It
Bassett was Oscar-nominated for Best Actress for this movie that chronicles superstar Tina Turner’s career and marriage. While Turner thinks that the musical based on her life is much closer to her experience than the finished film, she was on hand to personally apply Bassett’s makeup for later scenes in the movie. Years later, Bassett would induct Turner into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her solo achievements.
Set It Off
Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Jada Pinkett (now Jada Pinkett Smith) and Kimberly Elise play a quartet of friends pushed to the edge in Set It Off. They turn to bank robbery because they have real problems and deal with real challenges based on their race, economic status, sex and sexual orientation. They start to assume power for themselves instead of waiting for others to give it, and even when the inevitable happens, they have lived life on their terms, even if for a little while. When one of them escapes capture and has the freedom and resources she didn’t have at the beginning of the movie, viewers feel like she’s earned it.
Dreamgirls
Based on the Broadway musical of the same name, Dreamgirls follows three hopeful young singers (Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose and Jennifer Hudson) on their way to—and then past—fame. It’s also a movie about friendship as the girls fall out and ultimately return to each other. But perhaps the most inspiring storyline is watching Hudson’s Effie White come into her own, despite not having the right star “look.”
Lemonade
Taking lemons and turning them into lemonade, Beyoncé took her personal pain and turned it into something gorgeous and powerful in this “visual album” that accompanied her sixth album of the same name. The songstress relays sadness, anger and finally forgiveness and peace. She gets to feel all the feelings and come out stronger. Where to watch it: Tidal, Apple Music
Becoming
She’s finally accepted that she’s “our forever first lady,” and this MichelleObama documentary shows why. In the movie, the former First Lady of the United States does a book tour for her memoir Becoming while stressing her life before the White House was every bit as important as life in the White House. “We can’t afford to wait for the world to be equal to start feeling seen," she tells a group of students, and insists that there are “millions of Michelle and Barack Obamas all over the world,” even though we all know there’s just one Michelle. Where to watch it: Netflix
Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners
Another Shola Lynch documentary (produced by Jay-Z, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and James Lassiter), this movie explores the life and times of the assistant philosophy professor at UCLA who was fired for being a communist and turned into one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted criminals and Time’s “Woman of the Year” in 1971. “What does it mean to be a criminal in this society?” she asks. Davis inspires everyone to stand up for what they believe in and to be a little braver in their convictions.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
This is the first film that Penny Marshall directed and the second film Whoopi Goldbergwas ever in–and neither had been the first choice for the job. In this movie, Goldberg saves a British spy who is stranded in the field. The film was panned by some critics when it was released in 1986 and not all the jokes hit well now, but there’s a satisfaction in watching Whoopi get the best of men who think they’re better than she is. Plus she gets to blast the Rolling Stones, wear penguin slippers, hit people with frying pans, curse too much and be thoroughly Whoopi. Truth be told though, the loveliest part of the film is the end (spoiler ahead!) when a Black woman saves the day AND gets her man. (More of that, please!) Unfortunately, Stephen Collins, who later became a star of the long-running 7th Heaven and eventually went to prison for the sexual of several minors, appears here in a small but somewhat important role.
Dark Girls
Colorism among the Black community, and especially among Black women, is a topic that comes up regularly. This documentary explores how brown women, especially darker brown women, move about in a society that doesn’t always value them as they should be valued. There’s even a sequel; Dark Girls 2 can be seen on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Next, The 37 Best Female Friendship Movies of All Time, From Bridesmaids to Thelma & Louise
