A Daughter's Revenge (2018)

Shadow & Bone excels in natural story representation with powerful centering of culture. Jessie Mei Li stars as Alina Starkov, the feisty cartographer with kindness, innocence, and integrity, who comes to be revealed as the legendary summoner of light.

Some people’s first introduction to Mira Nair might be as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mom. But with her insightful direction of 1991’s Mississippi Masala, Nair shows how much she deserves to be known as an artist. Delivering a nuanced portrait of a romance between a Black man and an Indian woman living in the South, Nair explores the complications each character faces, giving both equal weight.

Trolls: World Tour doesn’t just pay lip service to diversity and inclusiveness. There is no white-washing of the voice actors. From the actual K-Pop group Red Velvet voicing the K-Pop Troll bounty hunters to Keenan Thompson playing the Tiny Diamond baby to Kunal Nayyar’s Guy Diamond, the cast includes more than just token minorities.

Given Hollywood's history of racism and financial motivations, how much progress can we expect? Plus: a list of excellent films by Black directors.

In Saudi Arabia, a little girl (Wadjda) is told she can't have a bike because she's a girl. Wadjda struggles to obtain a bicycle to race her friend, Abdullah, due to the gender inequality and cultural norms of Saudi Arabia.

Its predictability shouldn’t distract from the enjoyment that the pure cinematic imagination behind the camera elicits. It is a movie of crises both moral and mortal, oozing with CGI, and thoroughly enjoyable.