Black Mother

Name: Black Mother
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2018-11-02
Rating: 6.6

Documentary1h 17m

🍅97%

🍅

97%

Tomatometer

🍿

43%

Popcornmeter

6.6

TMDB

Storyline

Part film, part baptism, in BLACK MOTHER director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, BLACK MOTHER channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.

Trailers

Details

DirectorKhalik Allah

ReleasedNov 2, 2018

StatusReleased

Original languageEnglish

Budget

Not disclosed

Revenue

Not disclosed

Parental guideNot rated

Studios

Cinereach

Doc Society

Reviews

8 reviews · 7 critics

6 fresh · 1 rotten

Critics consensus

“A transfixing ode to geographic and familial roots, Black Mother pays poetic tribute to a place and culture from a brilliantly unique perspective.”

97% TomatometerRotten Tomatoes

Ben Sachs

RTChicago ReaderMar 24, 2020

This is highly sensuous filmmaking, not only in its vivid close-ups of flesh, food, and the natural world, but in the varied textures of[ Khalik] Allah's cinematography.

Justin Chang

RTFilmWeek (LAist)Sep 28, 2019

The effect of watching this movie is very emotional and sensual. It's overwhelming on both those levels.

Jessica Kiang

RTVarietyMay 21, 2019

Allah, who directed, shot, edited, and co-scored the film, avoids the literal and the linear to create a beguilingly immersive, multifaceted, vividly sensorial portrait of his mother's homeland, Jamaica.

Dan Schindel

RTVague VisagesDec 6, 2023

Even if you do not believe in the soul, the film makes it impossible to deny the soul of a country, that which births us, grooms us, and to which we add as we live and die inside it.