“Intimate and sweeping, intellectually exciting and formally audacious … [A] mind-expanding meditation on Black lives, identities, and experiences.”

Manohla Dargis, “Best Movies of 2025” (#5), The New York Times

A dazzling embroidery of ideas on Black history, identity, and aesthetics gives shape to artist Kahlil Joseph’s eagerly awaited debut feature, an expansion of his acclaimed 2019 Venice Biennale installation BLKNWS. Joseph, who rose to prominence directing music videos for, among others, Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar, and Lemonade-era Beyoncé, assembles the film’s kaleidoscopic material as though sequencing an LP, moving fluidly between modes (archival, memoir, essay, pure fiction) and concepts while carrying key, structural motifs forward. One such throughline is Encyclopedia Africana, originally conceived by W.E.B. Du Bois (but unrealized in his lifetime), which serves as an index of Black consciousness in the film. Another is an Afro-futuristic reverie: aboard an enormous ocean liner bound for Africa, the art of a transatlantic biennale is en route to repatriation. ​“This is not a documentary,” the film declares; either way, truth bristles everywhere.

“An immersion into Blackness … By fashioning a kinetic work that pulls together references and sources from Black literature, music, politics, and meme culture, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions stands as a seismic intellectual awakening.”

Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
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