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Jamaica, United States · 2018
1h 17m
Director Khalik Allah
Starring
Genre Documentary
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Director Khalik Allah takes the viewer on a journey through his ancestral homeland of Jamaica, an immersion into the turbulent histories and vibrant souls on the island, from the metropolis to the lush rainforests. A deeply personal and spiritual journey meditating on memory, identity, and history.
Paste Magazine by Andrew Crump
The combined effect of Black Mother’s technique—Allah shot on both 16mm and HD—is dizzying to the point of overwhelming, but the discipline required to engage with it is rewarded by a singular moviegoing experience. As the mother births her baby, so does Allah birth new cinematic grammar.
Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar
An eternal nurturer, the black mother whom Allah dissects and praises in this transfixing hymn of a movie about the place where the woman that gave him life was born is far more than just a homeland but a direct link to the answers about existence.
Allah has loaded Black Mother with so many remarkable faces and observations that viewers can hover in its details with ghostly ubiquity, and he only breaks the spell with the recurring image of a nude woman holding a coconut to ground us in some kind of structural trajectory.
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
In its poetic, elliptical, concise way, this film makes a grand statement: The black mother is the mother of life itself. And the gaze directed at the black faces and bodies in “Black Mother” is not a male gaze, or a documentarian’s gaze. It is a gaze of love.
A beguilingly immersive, multifaceted, vividly sensorial portrait of his mother’s homeland, Jamaica.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Whatever its impetus, the film is a warm bath of sensations that suffers little for any thematic haziness.
During much of Black Mother, the top of the next frame can be seen peeking from the bottom of the current one. The effect is a certain cinema verite bleariness, but also the suggestion that the person upon whom the camera is focused has a story that not only matters in this moment, but will go on.
The A.V. Club by Lawrence Garcia
What distinguishes the film is Allah’s superb eye and talent for portraiture.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
Like the culturally complex and often overwhelming island nation itself, Black Mother is a haunting and singular experience unlike any other.
RogerEbert.com by Tomris Laffly
In part shocking and gentle while trekking between chaotic and serene extremes, Black Mother is a fresh piece of work in both how it progresses and how it's assembled like a scrapbook of remembrances.
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