Black History Month: Amistad (1997)
Director: Steven Spielberg Run Time: 155 min. Release Year: 1997
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne
Country: United States
Language: English, Mende, Spanish, Portuguese
About the film:
Nominated for four Academy Awards.
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
About the filmmaker:
Steven Spielberg, often considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, inspired audiences and future storytellers with his science-fiction and adventure blockbusters—like Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Jurassic Park (1993) and the Indiana Jones films—as well as more serious films addressing the Holocaust, the Transatlantic slave trade, war, and terrorism. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), and has also been awarded a Kennedy Center honor, a Cecil B. DeMille Award, and an AFI Life Achievement Award.
Most recently, Spielberg has helmed the musical adaptation West Side Story (2021) and his semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans (2022), which won the People’s Choice Award at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and received seven nominations at the 95th Academy Awards.
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