Blackness isn’t a monolith, and neither is Black love. Black people could be bonding over hip-hop lyrics, helping fugitives evade the law, breaking up engagements with a basketball game, or even fighting against the prison system, and all of that would be expressions of Black love. There is a multitude of cinematic representations of Black love that can be found on Amazon Prime, so Complex decided to round up 10 of the best examples.
To be Black has historically meant to be suffering, and these films show how Black love can be a balm for that pain. A mother of six keeps hope alive that she’ll one day be reunited with the incarcerated father of her children because of Black love. A young Black boy grows into a man, even with an absentee parent, becuase of Black love. Two strangers become lovers while escaping the law because of Black love. So, take some time to immerse yourself in these 10 Black love films you can watch with Amazon Prime now.
'Brown Sugar'
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def, Nicole Ari Parker, Boris Kodjoe, Queen Latifah
The modern Black love language can often be found on top of a bass that rattles the soul, drums that move the body, and rhymes that connect to the heart. Brown Sugar is a seminal example of a Black love story told through hip-hop. The romantic comedy focuses on Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) and Dre (Taye Diggs) tracing their love story through the evolution of their love of hip-hop. Instead of bonding over a romantic dinner, their love blossoms on park benches sharing lyrics from one of the Blackest genres of music ever created. The climactic scene of the film when Dre asking Sidney when she fell in love with hip-hop leads to her confessing her love to him on the biggest hip-hop radio station in America at the time, which is the perfect symbolism for the culture Black people made inspiring a love that is uniquely Black.
'Queen & Slim'
Director: Melina Matsoukas
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Sturgill Simpson, Indya Moore
In a racist world, Black love is tantamount to a revolution. Melina Matsoukas’s feature film directorial debut finds criminal defense attorney Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and her Tinder date Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) molding an unbreakable bond on the run from the police after their first date ends in a white police officer shot dead by Slim. For more than two hours, there is seldom a moment in the film when the pair aren’t putting their lives on the line to protect each other. Queen’s climactic question “can I be your legacy” while death is seconds away and Slim’s fingers are interlocked with hers is one of the most enduring images of the permanence of Black love you’ll see on the screen anywhere. Queen & Slim is a perfect example of how Black love can be born from struggle and give people a purpose in a world working to strip it from them.
'Love Jones'
Director: Theodore Witcher
Starring: Larenz Tate, Nia Long, Isaiah Washington, Lisa Nicole Carson, Bill Bellamy
The volatility and persistence of Black love are on full display on Love Jones, a film about the love connection between photographer Nina Mosley (Nia Long) and poet Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate). Before they go on a single date, Darius recites a poem named “A Blues For Nina” at a nightclub the day they meet and shows up at her home to deliver the CD she wanted after getting her address from a check his friend wrote to Nina. More than simply looking into one romantic relationship, Love Jones questions the very nature of Black love with a level of deft profundity seldom seen in romance films. Whether it’s Darius stressing the urgency of love, Savon Garrison (Isaiah Washington) explaining the complexities of marriage, or Nina explaining how history isn’t enough to sustain love, Love Jones is full of gems on love.
'Love & Basketball'
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Starring: Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert
The movie that proved all is fair in love and basketball is a rare look at how Black love can be born out of and grown from competition. Love & Basketball has childhood friends Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and Monica Wright-McCall (Sanaa Lathan) discover, lose, and rekindle their love for one another via their love of the game of basketball as they both chart different journeys to the same goal of being professional basketball players. Neither of them shrinks their dreams to fit in the other’s life, causing friction but, more importantly, showing that Black love can survive without submission. In one of the most touching moments in the history of Black cinema, Monica and Quincy play a one-on-one game two weeks before Quincy’s wedding with her trying to win his heart. After the first time, you see that scene, and the film itself, you’ll never look at basketball or love the same again.
'Sylvie’s Love'
Director: Eugene Ashe
Starring: Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Ryan Michelle Bathe, Aja Naomi King, Eva Longoria
Sylvie’s Love is a classic love story of the serendipity and durability of love. Set in the late 1950s, the film follows the love courtship of aspiring TV producer Sylvie Parker (Tessa Thompson) and aspiring saxophonist Robert Halloway (Nnamdi Asomugha) from their summertime romance to the rekindling of their lost love after years of separation and different life paths. This Black love is as tender and warm as Robert’s sax playing, but it is a great display of how true love is based on self-love. When Sylvie says to her partner “I can’t be the woman of your dreams while also being the woman of my own,” you see a woman refusing to crumble her dreams to build up a reality her heart isn’t fully in. Fire up this Amazon Original film to watch how Black love is as classic as any love.
'Lovers Rock'
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Micheal Ward
Lovers Rock, a gripping installment of Steve McQueen’s five-part anthology series Small Axe, centers around two strangers—Franklyn Cooper (Michael Ward) and Martha Trenton (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn)—maneuvering around screaming matches, sexual assault, and the specter of racism to find Black love in each other for one night in the middle of a crowded dance floor in West London in the 1980s. Their romantic connection steers the narration, but viewers are greeted with a rapturous look into the communal Black love orchestrated by a DJ and a crateful of island classics. All of the disagreements, feelings of abandonment, and fear melt down the sweaty flesh of the swaying bodies and singing lips possessed in unison by the grooves of Janet Kay’s reggae classic “Silly Games.” Lovers Rock feels like a 68-minute snapshot of a moment in time where the outside world can not penetrate the Black love that unites the oppressed.
'The Wood'
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Taye Diggs, Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones, Sean Nelson
Growing up Black in America usually means you learn to love different than any other group. The Wood is a coming-of-age classic which follows three childhood friends—Michael “Mike” Tarver (Omar Epps), Laveinio “Slim” Hightower (Richard T. Jones), Roland Blackmon (Taye Diggs)—as they recollect on the stories of their upbringing while trying to cure Roland’s wedding day cold feet. While Roland’s matrimonial dilemma is why they’re together, the film’s emotional driver is the story of Mike’s love connection with Alicia (Malinda Williams). The innocence of their first dance was complicated by an erection; losing their virginities to each other was complicated by a dangerous search for a condom, and even the first time Mike showed affection was complicated by an ill-advised butt grab. The Wood is a timeless look into how Black love can persevere through time, cold feet, and a schoolyard beatdown.
'Moonlight'
Director: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali
To love is to be brave, and Barry Jenkins’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece Moonlight shows the perils and promise of Black love. For a little under two hours, viewers watch the many life stages of a young Black boy from Miami named Chiron—child Chiron (Alex Hibbert), teen Chiron (Ashton Sanders), and adult Chiron (Trevante Rhodes)—as finds love and despair in a drug-addicted mother who abandons him, a remorseful drug dealer who practically adopts him, and a childhood friend named Kevin who helped him embrace his homosexuality without judgment. The insidious relationship the Black community has with Black men loving other Black men sends Chiron through self-identity issues that affect his ability to be intimate in his older years. There isn’t one singular romance the film follows, even though Chiron and Kevin’s intimate moments are the impetus for some of the film’s most erudite commentary on homosexuality. Instead, Moonlight is an unflinching look int the life-long ramifications love, and lack thereof can have on a Black man.
'How Stella Got Her Groove Back'
Director: Kevin Rodney Sullivan
Starring: Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Regina King, Whoopi Goldberg
Love doesn’t have an expiration date on How Stella Got Her Groove Back, one of the greatest films about Black love to ever grace a screen. The romantic comedy follows 40-year-old businesswoman Stella Payne (Angela Bassett) as her attempt to break out of work monotony to have fun leads her to a Jamaican vacation where she falls in love with a 20-year-old Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs). Beyond the seductive dancing, intimate conversations, and steamy shower sex, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, at its core, is a harrowing tale of a Black woman wrestling with ageist views of love and choosing her own happiness over societal norms. In that sense, How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a film about the triumph of Black love, both from within and with a partner. Watch How Stella Got Her Groove whenever you need a reminder of that Black love doesn’t expire.
'Time'
Director: Garrett Bradley
Starring: Fox Rich, Rob G. Rich
The prison system has torn Black families apart for centuries, and Amazon’s original documentary film Time shows a Black that endured it all. Featuring footage that spans two decades, Time documents Sibil Fox Richardson’s fight to free her husband from serving his 60-year prison sentence for a bank robbery they both participated in. The mother of six struggles raising young Black boys into Black men without a fatherly influence and gets frustrated by a prison system that shows no regard for the loved ones of those imprisoned. But, we see her continually call to find out more about her husband’s case and watched her sons defy the odds by enrolling and graduating from colleges, as well as one enrolling in dental school. If you ever doubted the resiliency of Black love, watch Time and see how one woman never stopped fighting for the love she has.
