Charles Burnett Movies

An improvised late '60s short-subject student film, and debut movie of Charles Burnett, done in the neo-realist, documentary film style. A...

Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) is engaged to marry talented white jazz musician Meade Howell, but the pair face opposition from both Meade's family, who...

In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested...

Filmmaker Robert Townsend executive-produced the following fifty-six-minute program for Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series in 2018. In it,...

An Iranian couple (Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mohsen Marzban) declare themselves political refugees after police detain them on their way to Cuba.

Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, a collective of African American filmmakers, artists, and...

Tells the poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the...

Jason Ross is an 11-year-old boy whose love for baseball exceeds his talent for the game. When cut from his little league team, Jason's undefeatable...

A teenage boy leaves a moment of boredom while his father works on his old car, and the mother wishes to go out for a stroll around the block. One...

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she...

Part of a multi-platform project highlighted by an hour long documentary about black filmmakers who worked and studied at UCLA between 1965 and the...

After the death of his father, a former football star reunites with the family that he abandoned years earlier.

This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's...

A single mother ekes out a living from welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter.

Director Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, My Brother's Wedding, To Sleep with Anger) presents a tale about a young boy's encounter with his family...

Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.

A Little League baseball game becomes the unlikely context for this lyrical drama about memory and loss, told from the perspective of a...

Dorothy is a poor black woman. Her husband is put in jail for no observable reason, and she is pregnant with a second child. The government threatens...