It seems like everyday when we turn on the news, there’s yet another trying, upsetting and arguably traumatizing thing going on. Whether it’s some absurd policy enacted by President Donald Trump that aims to erase the history and contributions of Black folks from or another senseless police brutality encounter—what’s beyond clear is that the news is no longer a safe space for us Black folks.
What’s also true is that in tough times like these, where the word “unprecedented” seems to be putting things lightly: it’s sometimes better and oddly comforting to deal with the trauma you’re familiar with than face the hardships of the trauma that you’re not familiar with. Whether that’s to gain some sort of semblance of escapism or to remind yourself that we as a people have overcome worse—watching certain projects that depict how we dealt with facing the worst fills some sort of hole in our psyche that helps us subconsciously deal with the current circumstances.
So it’s in that vein that we thought we’d take a look at a handful of Black trauma films in the hopes that it’ll either provide with either that sense of escapism or, in a weird way, a sense of hope that just like some our favorite characters in our favorite traumatic films—our story can end a bit differently.
Read on to get into the list!