With rich storytelling, fine acting, and captivating cinematography and score by Flying Lotus, the movie is a cinematic achievement.

Like the similarly quiet and thrumming Moonlight, Imperial is most affecting as an internal portrait of a young black man's struggle to embrace softness when the world tells him he has to be hard to survive.

Malik Vitthal's first feature gives rich dramatic life to a piercingly analytical view of the American way of incarceration.

More than any other gang movie in recent memory, Imperial Dreams sidesteps cliches and carves out a place of its own next to the best films in the genre.