One of the stables every summer season is the American Black Film Festival, a pioneering event championing the most powerful voices contemporary black cinema has to offer. To accompany the recent announcement that writer and actress Issa Rae (Barbie, American Fiction) will serve as the new creative director for the festival this year, it has also been unveiled that she will launch a programme called “Creator Conversations.”
In this inaugural edition of this live event, the director of the best picture nominated “Selma,” the acclaimed documentary “13th,” and last year’s triumph “Origin,” Ava DuVernay, alongside the creator of “Black-ish” and director of 2023’s “You People,” Kenya Barris, will speak with Issa Rae about their creative processes and recent projects.
The event will take place during the festival, Friday, June 14th, the 28th ABFF, which runs from the 12th to the 16th. Nicole Friday, for Variety, commented on how “truly delighted” the festival is to “get a rare glimpse into the minds of three trailblazers who are reshaping the landscape of film and television.”
Issa Rae is evidently already putting her stamp on the festival, and these kinds of conversations are exactly what film festivals such as this one are made for. These conversations will be screened alongside a slew of in-competition narrative features and documentary features, awards for which will be hosted on June 15 by actor Dondre Whitfield, an HBO Short Film showcase to kick off the festival, a Denzel Washington career retrospective and a series of special screenings.
