Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Director: Shaka King Run Time: 126 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2021
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Dominique Fishback, Jesse Plemons, LaKeith Stanfield
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
Premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and earned six nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for both LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, and won Best Supporting Actor for Kaluuya and Best Original Song (“Fight for You”). For his performance, Kaluuya also won Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and BAFTA Awards.
“Intense, infuriating and indisputably timely… the powerful film puts the current moment into fresh historical context”
—Peter DeBruge for Variety
FBI informant William O’Neal infiltrates the Illinois Black Panther Party and is tasked with keeping tabs on their charismatic leader, Chairman Fred Hampton. A career thief, O’Neal revels in the danger of manipulating both his comrades and his handler, Special Agent Roy Mitchell. Hampton’s political prowess grows just as he’s falling in love with fellow revolutionary Deborah Johnson.
Meanwhile, a battle wages for O’Neal’s soul. Will he align with the forces of good? Or subdue Hampton and The Panthers by any means, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover commands?
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About the filmmaker:
Shaka King is a writer, director and producer of films that entertain while directly challenging the culture of racism in America. Two of his short films were selected by the Sundance Film Festival – the 2015 short film Mulignans, a poignant satire of racial dynamics, and Vimeo Staff Pick LaZercism, his 2017 riff on the “racial glaucoma” that prevents white people from seeing people of color. His debut feature, the 2013 dark comedy Newlyweeds, premiered at Sundance and won him the Someone to Watch grant at the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards. King co-wrote the screenplay for his second feature film, the critically acclaimed historical drama Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), with Will Berson based on a story by brothers Kenny and Keith Lucas.
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