Thrive (2022)

Here are some of our picks for inclusive Black love stories in film and media. We hope you enjoy these tender love stories and beautiful depictions.

Wes Anderson offers a light-hearted comedy in the Middle East centering around Catholic motifs. 

Telling a story about the French and Indian Wars from the perspective of the British prioritizes the perspective of the colonizers. 

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.

The French-born director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s strategic choice to entrust the interpretation of a conventional, feminine character to a non-binary actor pays off: Corrin’s Lady Chatterley is awkward, edgy, and uninhibited at the same time. 

'Jungle Cruise' is fun if you can ignore the racism of the ride it’s based on and the film’s bland, stereotypical characters.