Professor Irvin Hunt of African American Studies was a lead screenwriter for the film BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this February and was ranked by Metacritic as “best of festival.” Directed by Khalil Joseph, known for his work on the companion film to Beyonce’s Lemonade, BLKNWS is an Afro-futurist film that interweaves narratives set before and after the fall of the British monarchy. We follow Sarah, an undercover journalist traveling on a technologically advanced ocean liner called the Nautica. The ship is a reimagining of Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line had it survived. It heads to Ghana across the Atlantic, while Sarah listens to ancestral voices emerging from the water, all while secretly covering the Transatlantic Biennial. We watch a fictional W. E. B. Du Bois travel his own emotional journey as he works to complete one of his most ambitious projects, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience.” Living in Ghana toward the end of his life, Du Bois comes to realizations about his personal and philosophical connections to Garvey, while grieving the loss of his daughter. And with quiet emotional power, we see Joseph chart the imprint Du Bois's encyclopedic project made on his own childhood and family.
Bending time with archival material, immersive techno music, photographs, and multimedia elements, BLKNWS meditates on “what it means to occupy a state of being intoxicated with freedom," in the words of filmmaker Shari Frilot.
For more on the film, check out these reviews:
https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/blknws-terms-and-conditions-review-1236286916/