Soul Patrol (2026)
Director: J.M. Harper Run Time: 100 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2026
Starring: Danielle Lyn, Deion Smith, Michael Oloyede
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
A new documentary that uncovers the hidden chapter of American military history by focusing on the Vietnam War’s first Black special ops team, an elite unit operating deep behind enemy lines. With unprecedented access to this once-secretive group of African-American veterans, director J.M. Harper reconstructs their journey with an immediacy rarely seen in Vietnam War storytelling, using raw Super 8 footage, photographs, and audio recordings from their personal archives.
“Weaving together eloquent visuals with energy and deep feeling… an essential historical chronicle, and one that reverberates now”
–Sheri Linden for The Hollywood Reporter
Opening on the war’s 50th anniversary, the surviving members reunite in a hotel that becomes a surreal liminal space, where memory, brotherhood, and unresolved trauma collide. As the men reflect on their experiences, the film interrogates the contradictions of fighting for freedom abroad while facing inequality at home. This is not just a war story, but a reckoning – an intimate portrait of survival, memory, and the enduring cost of war on those asked to fight it.
Soul Patrol (2026) premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where J.M. Harper won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition.
About the filmmaker:
J.M. Harper is a Brooklyn-based writer and director whose work challenges conventional narratives and illuminates underrepresented voices. His directorial debut, As We Speak (2024), which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, examines the use of rap lyrics as evidence in the American criminal justice system. His sophomore feature, Soul Patrol (2026), premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where Harper received the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary. As an editor, Harper’s credits include the Emmy-nominated jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (2022), A Kid from Coney Island (2019), and Down a Dark Stairwell (2020). He also served as an executive producer on the Peabody Award-winning documentary Daughters (2024). He was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” list in 2024. In 2025, he was awarded the prestigious Concordia Fellowship, the Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship and is a Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film Finalist.
See our upcoming films