Le Franc (1995)

As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.

The film follows the biblical story of Moses, from his time as a prince of Egypt, to a leader for the people of Israel. It’s a film that works brilliantly in animation, and is one that both children and adults can; enjoy despite its religious contexts, it is friendly to general audiences.

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

White audiences saw Peola’s mixed-race passing as a Black woman’s struggle to be white. Black audiences saw it as the rebellion of a Black woman trying to gain privileges only given to white people.

This Netflix series is a remake based on the book series of the same name with a more diverse main cast.

In order to learn why an arguably outdated fanfic trope was resurfacing in the contact zone of popular culture, I dove into a vibrant trough of character development.