Eighteen Black Films Go to Toronto

Every September the movie business goes to Toronto to find out what it made. The festival runs September 10 to 20 this year, and if you only read the big headlines you would think it was about superhero sequels. It is not. Read the program closely and you find at least eighteen films by or about Black people, from every corner of the diaspora, and a few of them are going to be the movies we argue about all winter.

Here is the list, in plain words, so you know what to look for when they leave Toronto and come to you.

Chris Rock wrote and directed Misty Green, a sharp Hollywood satire about racism, class, and what it costs to survive the business. Rosalind Eleazar leads, with Daniel Kaluuya, Adam Driver, and Anna Kendrick. Rock has been telling this joke on stage for thirty years. Now he gets to show it.

Mahershala Ali stars in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, from director Bassam Tariq. He plays a deeply religious contract killer in Texas who has to protect his children after his wife dies. Two Oscars, and he still picks the strange, quiet roles. That is why the Oscars.

Cynthia Erivo carries Prima Facie, the story of a barrister whose view of the law flips when she becomes a survivor herself. And The Julia Set puts Chase Infiniti, who broke out last year, on a campus where a brilliant student keeps getting overlooked. Chloe Bailey is in it too.