If Beale Street Could Talk

A couple discuss their relationship.

Aadid tells us his life in seven minutes. He's an Arabic-speaking young man working the night shift at a laundromat and dry cleaners somewhere in the United States. In the aftermath of 9/11, they wash U.S. flags for free. He says they get six or seven per day. He tells us about Napoleon's two wives: Marie Louise for an heir, Josephine for love. Aadid likes Adela, his co-worker. She's his Josephine. We watch Aadid and Adela hand wash the flags and put them in dryers. They fold them. They dance. They stand side by side outside the door of the laundromat looking at the dawn. Will this companionship become something more?

Waking from a one-night stand that neither remembers, Micah and Joanne find themselves wandering the streets of San Francisco, sharing coffee and conversation and searching for a deeper connection.

Love knows no borders in this stylish snapshot of interracial coupledom. Two Brooklyn photographers (she, African-American; he, Chinese-American) meet at Bloomingdale's (albeit one located in China). Their romance blossoms and endures back home amidst a poetical widescreen mix of images both seductive and sedate. - Dennis Harvey

A little brown boy gets caught up in a violent shooting and must come to terms with the incident and the part he has played.

In all my years of doing press, I've been repeatedly asked about the white gaze. Rarely have I been set upon about the Black gaze; or the gaze distilled. This is an answer to a question rarely asked.

The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

Upon returning to their countryside cabin one day, Kaya, his wife Helen, and their daughter Naomi are confronted by two suited men: representatives of the San Francisco Remigration Program. The men explain that San Francisco is now occupied entirely by the wealthy class. But stoplights still burn out and trains occasionally jump their rails. Blue-collar labor isn't obsolete, but it's scarce. The city has created a program to "remigrate" long-gone working class families from their inland homes back to the city that once pushed them out. Kaya, Helen, and Naomi return to San Francisco and join a handful of other potential remigrants for a tour of what can be expected in their new lives. But can they learn to trust their old home once again?

A prequel to Disney's 2019 film, "The Lion King".

Its single hand-held shot lends both immediacy of viewpoint and a floating unreality to a young woman's visit to a Seattle convenience store, seemingly fraught with menacing purpose.