Recommendations

A white savior movie is a film that portrays white self-sacrifice as necessary to “help” or “fix” a black person’s situation. In a white savior film, black characters are represented as victims who are desperately in need of the help of white people in order to thrive in society. As Chris Rock noted in the movie Top Five: “In any civil rights movie, there’s two heroes. There’s the black hero, and the white person who’s ‘equally’ as important.”

Selected here are five white savior movies you should skip–and what to watch instead.

During the past and continuing to the present, major black voices have found artistic expression in filmmaking, creating some of cinema’s most memorable moments. From the liberating catharsis of the blaxploitation genre to the genre-defying films of Spike Lee, black filmmakers have made an indelible imprint on the history of film. And new filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Barry Jenkins, and Ryan Coogler have ushered in new and challenging voices to contemporary cinema. Collected here are 15 of history’s most influential and successful black filmmakers.