The beautiful thing about the progress Black filmmakers made in the ‘90s is that there was so much room to grow creatively in the 21st century. Directors like Spike Lee, John Singleton, the Hughes Brothers, and F. Gary Gray laid a strong foundation for the next generation of filmmakers to build upon.
In the 2000s and beyond, the Oscars began to show more love to Black directors, with five out of the six Black Best Director nominations happening in the 21st century. Sticking with the Oscars, in 2025, Ryan Coogler’s fifth film, Sinners, made history by picking up 16 nominations and winning four, including making Coogler and his frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan Oscar winners for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor, respectively. (Fun fact: Jordan Peele won Best Original Screenplay for 2017’s Get Out, a first for Black screenwriters.) Outside of awards season, Coogler proved to be a box office dynamo after 2018’s Black Panther grossed $1.35 billion globally. That same year, Ava DuVernay become the first Black woman to direct a film with a $100 million budget with Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time.
While the creators of some of the best Black movies of the ‘90s (such Lee and Singleton) continued to elevate the art form in the 21st century, the emergence of new Black voices like Barry Jenkins, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Boots Riley has allowed the very idea of a “Black movie” to expand. The 21st century has seen Black creators finding exciting new ways to bring authentic Black stories to the world. These are the 20 best Black movies of the 21st century.
Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Starring: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah
Four college friends reunite to attend Essence Fest in New Orleans, setting the stage for a raucous comedy led by Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, and Jada Pinkett Smith. Girls Trip became “the film that introduced Tiffany Haddish to the world.” Her character Dina steals the show with her willingness to go the extra mile for big belly laughs. The fact that it was a box office smash (bringing in almost $141 million on a $19 million budget) was not surprising. What doesn’t make sense is that Hollywood hasn’t regularly tried to let more women go ballistic for the LOLs.
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def, Nicole Ari Parker, Boris Kodjoe, Queen Latifah
In 1994, Common released “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” an extended metaphor about how hip-hop culture has evolved, using a relationship with a young woman as the conceit. In Brown Sugar, Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) is writing a book titled I Used to Love H.E.R. about her relationship to the culture, while pretending not to be upset that her life-long homie Dre is getting married to an attorney. Romcoms focused on an adult friendship turning into something more, set against the backdrop of the evolving world of hip-hop? We used to be a country!
Director: Boots Riley
Starring: LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer
Shout out to pivots in life. If you grew up in the ‘90s, you knew Boots Riley as part of The Coup, the Oakland group that put revolutionary messages over dope beats. Putting together the kind of pitch-black comedy that was advertised in the trailers, featuring Atlanta star LaKeith Stanfield perfecting his “white” voice at his telemarketing job into a lucrative career that finds him losing parts of himself, felt closer to what Riley wrote about…until the other shoe drops. Without spoiling the major twist in this film, just know that things get very hairy before coming to a satisfying end. For his first foray into film, Riley brought the absurdist Trojan Horse straight to your door.
Director: Dee Rees
Starring: Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans, Aasha Davis
An exercise in realism, Pariah is a unique coming-of-age story about a teenage girl accepting her sexuality and dealing with the consequences of her discovery. The autobiographical debut feature from Dee Rees won the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival after five years of development, with Spike Lee joining as executive producer to help Rees realize her vision. Kudos to Kim Wayans for her portrayal of Audrey, a deeply religious character that was a departure from her comedic roles on In Living Color and The Wayans Brothers.
Director: Lawrence Lamont
Starring: Keke Palmer, SZA, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Lil Rel Howery, Katt Williams
Hey Hollywood! Putting two dope Black women together in a hard-R rated comedy just makes sense. It took the suits eight years to realize this after the success of 2017’s Girls Trip. The always-funny Keke Palmer and SZA (in her film debut) play two friends in dire straits: they need to come up with $1,500 by the end of the day or they will get evicted from their apartment in Los Angeles. This leads to a wild journey through the community as these two plot, hustle, and scheme their way across town trying to come up with the money. If you follow either SZA or Keke on the timeline, you know of their natural humor individually; putting them together for this project was a stroke of brilliance.
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Starring: Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert
Love and Basketball is the kind of movie that Black cinema needs more of nowadays. It tells an unconventional love story told over time, featuring two of the industry’s brightest stars (Epps and Lathan) at the time, going one-on-one for love. Fresh off the release of auntie classics like The Best Man and The Wood, Love and Basketball managed to tell a Black love story that avoided tired stereotypes or unnecessary drama (outside of what we put our significant others through). An inspirational debut from Gina Prince-Bythewood.
Director: Mati Diop
Starring: Ibrahima Traoré, Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow, Nicole Sougou, Aminata Kane, Mariama Gassama, Coumba Dieng, Ibrahima Mbaye, Diankou Sembene
A ghostly tale of uncanny romance based on the challenge of Senegalese youth migrating to Europe, Atlantics seamlessly blends the supernatural with cinema vérité. The story follows Ada, who is set to marry a wealthy man, Omar, but is in love with Souleiman, who dies during his journey to Europe. The feature-length debut of actress/filmmaker Mati Diop, Atlantics is the major moment in what will hopefully be a long, rich career.
Director: John Singleton
Starring: Tyrese Gibson, Snoop Dogg, Ving Rhames, Omar Gooding, A.J. Johnson, Taraji P. Henson
The last film that Singleton wrote, deemed by many to be his best since Boyz n the Hood, gave Tyrese Gibson his first feature acting role as Jody, while giving Taraji P. Henson the brightest light she had thus far playing his girlfriend (and the mother of his child), Yvette. True to the film’s title, Baby Boy was an eye-opening critique of young Black men who failed to accept their responsibilities. The key is the film’s authenticity; even when Jody and Yvette were cursing each other out, it sounded just like the “drunk in love” couples you hear arguing up the block. There’s a reason why this film stays in rotation on BET; it feels like home, warts and all.
Director: Scott Sanders
Starring: Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, Salli Richardson
The hilarious blaxploitation homage Black Dynamite is Michael Jai White’s opus. He portrays a former CIA agent hellbent on avenging the death of his brother by riding drugs from the neighborhood, which puts him in the middle of a devious plot to defeat the Black community from within. The film is heavy on satire, but it’s all done with love, especially because once the talking is done, Michael Jai White gets to royally kick some ass! The film was so dope, it got turned into an animated Adult Swim series.
Director: Channing Godfrey Peoples
Starring: Nicole Beharie, Kendrick Sampson, Alexis Chikaeze
While Juneteenth wasn’t a foreign concept in Black culture, it’s only made a few appearances in Black entertainment (notably in Kenya Barris’ black-ish). In 2020, many corporations started taking the day—which marks the end of slavery in the United States—more seriously. It was also the year that Nicole Beharie starred in Channing Godfrey Peoples’s underrated film Miss Juneteenth, which finds Beharie playing Turquoise, a former Miss Juneteenth pageant winner who is raising her daughter for the same pageant while living a life that’s not as glamorous as she once dreamed of. “And that’s why bringing someone like Turquoise and Ronnie and Kai of the film,” Beharie told Complex in 2020. “It’s important to breathe life into those kinds of stories and have those movies be made.”
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Jean Reno, Chadwick Boseman
After the success of BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee took his talents to Southeast Asia for Da 5 Bloods, a.k.a. the film that should have made Delroy Lindo an Oscar winner. The story focuses on a group of Black Army vets who return to Vietnam to retrieve the gold they buried during the war. In typical Lee fashion, the film ended up delivering amazing moments (remember how viral Delroy dancing in the club went?) and powerful messages (like the group grappling with the MAGA rhetoric Paul spews). The story was so necessary that Lee went to Netflix to shoot this war-torn drama on film. From the use of Marvin Gaye’s music to connect the struggles of Black Vietnam vets to Chadwick Boseman’s beautiful monologue, with his portrayal of “Stormin” Norman Earl Holloway as the last work he did before his death, Lee put his foot all the way in this one.
Director: Ava DuVernay
Starring: David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth, Carmen Ejogo, Common, Giovanni Ribisi, Alessandro Nivola, Cuba Gooding Jr., Oprah Winfrey
One of Ava DuVernay’s strengths is her ability to truly see and understand…well, us. Depictions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have graced television and theater screens since his assassination in 1968, but none have captured the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery to express African Americans’ desire to vote quite like she did with Selma. David Oyelowo’s captivating performance as Dr. King anchors this Best Picture-nominated feature (which won the Oscar for Best Original song with John Legend and Common’s “Glory”). The film puts the terrifying times and the triumphant individuals looking to make change for the future on full display.
Director: Shaka King
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Martin Sheen
Judas and the Black Messiah tells the story of Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), an FBI informant who worked his way into the Black Panther Party, leading to the assassination of Fred Hampton, portrayed by Daniel Kaluuya in a fiery performance that won Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. Stanfield played the conflicted O’Neal perfectly, and the talented Dominique Fishback also deserves props, as do the Lucas Bros, who are normally known for their stand-up comedy but found a way to bring Hampton’s story to the big screen. It’s hard to say how a film like Judas and the Black Messiah would have performed in theaters, given its release during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a shame it didn’t have the chance.
Director: RaMell Ross
Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Jimmie Fails, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Nickel Boys tackles a difficult subject matter in a unique way. The film follows two young men during their time at an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida, inspired by the real life horrors of Dozier School for Boys. In a move that puts viewers into the shoes of these boys in that predicament, the film is shot as a series of single take scenes shot from a first-person perspective, alternating between the guys. For a lot of talk about films being the medium that allows a viewer to “see” a situation in ways they never have, Nickel Boys flips this idea on its head to great effect, and earned two Academy Award nominations (for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay) in the process.
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
While Spike Lee’s legacy has already been certified, it’s taken time for his films to receive mass mainstream acceptance and genuine love. Part of that is on him; Spike is going to Spike, no matter what the consequences. That, despite his consistent output, it wasn’t until 2018’s Jordan Peele-produced BlacKkKlansman that Lee received a Best Picture or Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards. Lee won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for this film, which was loosely-based on Ron Stallworth’s experiences as a Black detective working to expose a local Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 70s. As amazing as it was to see Lee work with Denzel Washington’s son, John David Washington brings an energy all his own to his work as Stallworth, bouncing off of Adam Driver beautifully as two cops determined to dismantle the Klan.
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Anthony Bellew
Scorsese and De Niro, Carpenter and Russell, Scorsese and DiCaprio—you gotta love it when a director finds their actor. There’s a rhythm to their work, with the beauty of their relationship as collaborators off screen turning into dynamic work on screen. Currently, Michael B. Jordan has been in every film Ryan Coogler has directed, and arguably, it was 2015’s Creed that signaled to the rest of the industry that there was a new duo in town. Coogler, a lifelong fan of the Rocky franchise due to his father’s love of the movies, found a way to bring Rocky Balboa to the modern era, through the son Apollo Creed had been hiding from the world. Jordan, as Adonis Creed, walked the walk of a boxer, and talked the talk of a leading man, birthing a successful new franchise while opening doors for Coogler to reinvigorate the system.
Director: Charles Stone III
Starring: Wood Harris, Mekhi Phifer, Cam’ron
Paid in Full is the definition of a modern hood classic. Older than most of the films on this list, it resonated for a few reason. First, there’s the overall authenticity; even if the lives of legendary Harlem drug kingpins Rich Porter, Alpo, and AZ didn’t mirror the film, the energy is there. The clothes, the cars, the crazy interactions. Wood Harris, who many know for his work as Avon Barksdale in The Wire, leads the film, narrating the tale, while Mekhi Phifer embodies the heart of a hustler trying to support his family and Cam’ron plays the wildest card in the deck. An early feather in the cap of Roc-A-Fella Films.
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Damon Wayans, Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tommy Davidson, Michael Rapaport
Bamboozled may not have been the message audiences wanted at the time (it was considered a box office bomb, bringing in only a quarter of its $10 million budget), but it is the one that resonates the loudest. Damon Wayans plays Pierre Delacroix, who, in an effort to get fired from his day job at a TV network, develops a modern-day minstrel show. What Pierre didn’t bank on was his “wannabe down” boss (Michael Rapaport) actually being into the idea and making it a reality. With Bamboozled, Spike pulls no punches, willing to deliver the medicine without a spoonful of sugar or a cup of juice to chase it with. Sadly, the buffoonery that Black creators have subjected themselves to over the years is still a discussion today.
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David
When is a UFO film not “just a UFO film”? When it’s Jordan Peele at his most Steven Spielberg. Sure, Nope is about an unidentified flying object, but Peele’s creation flows through the air like a stingray does in water, and what’s inside aren’t little green men. The film also isn’t (just) a horror; sure, horrific things happen—including the aforementioned UFO raining blood onto an entire house, one of Nope’s darkest moments—but it’s more about spectacle, and what people are willing to do to achieve it. Some would capture traumatic moments like monkey maulings on TV sitcom sets for profit, while others would race into the middle of nowhere to capture seconds of an otherworldly being on camera. Nope allowed Kaluuya and grasping onto the magnificent. Nope is a lot of things, but it sure as hell ain’t “just a UFO film.”
Director: Barry Jenkins
Starring: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, Pedro Pascal, Ed Skrein, Brian Tyree Henry, Regina King
After winning three Oscars for 2016’s Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’s next project was bringing James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk to theaters. This film was the first time many saw what KiKi Layne could do; she plays Tish, a pregnant woman desperate to clear her lover from the crime he was wrongly accused of. At the time of its release, the Black Lives Matter movement was in full swing; Beale Street was a strong reminder that these issues ran deep within the roots of this country. Regina King in particular stood out as Tish’s mother in a performance that netted her first Oscar and Golden Globe wins.
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis
The illest part of Ryan Coogler’s story is that he truly went from strength to strength. The critical success of Fruitvale Station eventually led to 2015’s Creed, which set Coogler on the beginning of his “name your price” era. While Coogler was cooking, Boseman had already been tapped to portray the Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Marvel Studios looking to make the right decision as director, a number of talented Black filmmakers (including Ava DuVernay and F. Gary Gray) were in talks with Marvel about directing the film, including Coogler. With Creed doing well in 2015 (and F. Gary Gray deciding to direct The Fate of the Furious), Coogler was on board to bring the beauty of Africa to the MCU’s Wakanda. Not only did he succeed there, but he also was able to turn T’Challa into a James Bond of sorts, weaving himself into rooms before bringing the ruckus. The film also boasted a cast of today’s best in the industry, with Boseman sharing scenes with Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya, Sterling K. Brown, the queen Angela Basset, and even Forest Whitaker. Black Panther excelled at being a Marvel movie, complete with a bad guy who doesn’t make it to the end. (And in typical Coogler fashion, that was he frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan challenging Thanos for best superhero villain at the time.)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Cliff Curtis, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg
Like his tag team partner Spike Lee, Denzel Washington has continued to work throughout the 21s century, a working actor who also happens to be the GOAT of his craft. And while many will say he should have won the Academy Award for Best Actor for 1992’s Malcolm X, his command performance in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day is what made the Academy make things right.
Training Day introduces us to Washington’s Det. Alonzo Harris through a rookie cop named Jake (Ethan Hawke), who shadows Alonzo for the day. Somewhere around that hit of PCP, Jake realizes that he’s in over his head, being taken on a hellride on the shadier side of the Los Angeles Police Department. Training Day soon becomes Denzel’s sandbox, allowing him to King Kong the community into doing his bidding. It’s the Denzel you love to hate, delivering a performance that truly deserved the Oscar.
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Catherine Keener
The film that propelled Jordan Peele, best known for his comedy work on MADtv and Comedy Central’s Key & Peele, into an emerging talent, in horror and in general, was Get Out. This film helped mark a shift in the industry. With a title taken from what Black folks would shout at characters in a horror film, Get Out follows a young Black man (Kaluuya) who discovers that his white girlfriend and her family aren’t what they seem. Beneath their smiling liberal facade lies a family preying on Black bodies, selling them off to the highest bidder. While horror has always addressed on social issues, Peele emerged as the right creative voice for the time, turning a $4.5 million budget into almost $260 million at the box office, and winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Get Out brought Kaluuya to the forefront, and turned Jordan Peele into the most in-demand creative to this day.
Director: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali
A triumph in acting, cinematography, and writing, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight should be studied. The film is a landmark in properly depicting Black skin on film, something that has been an issue since the creation of the medium. From Best Supporting Actor winner Mahershala Ali as a guiding light to the work of Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes in their portrayals of the child, teen, and adult Chiron, Moonlight spoke volumes for Black boys discovering themselves in a world not built to protect them. Moonlight deserved the Best Picture Oscar, as it does what great cinema does: it finds mesmerizing ways to deliver messages through stories that, frankly, you wouldn’t normally get to hear. A crowning achievement for the medium.
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Delroy Lindo
You want to know why Warner Bros. couldn’t say no when Ryan Coogler showed up with a list of demands before letting them distribute an idea as original as Sinners? Because they understood his track record. They saw that he entered the stage with critical acclaim through Fruitvale Station, telling the story of the last day of Oscar Grant’s life. He moved onto Creed in 2015, reawakening the Rocky franchise while turning his right hand man Michael B. Jordan into a household name before aligning with Chadwick Boseman for one of the MCU’s best film, Black Panther. When it was time for Coogler to request first-dollar gross, final cut, and ownership of the film after a quarter century, Warner Bros. could smell the $370.1 million box office on a budget of $100 million. This isn’t rocket science; Coogler’s been building to this the entire time.
In Sinners, Coogler does what he does best: creates a bloody good vampire flick focused on a pair of twins (both played by Jordan, work which earned him an Oscar for Best Actor) who hit a lick on the mob in the 1930s and plan on opening a juke joint with the proceeds during a whole vampire invasion. Through captivating visuals and memorable music selections (including the work of exciting newcomer Miles Caton), Sinners swung for the fences, hitting home runs every time. Sixteen Oscar nominations later (with wins for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Original Screenplay), Sinners is both Coogler’s crowning achievement and a beacon of hope for the future of Black filmmakers.