A Black History Month Watchlist
In honor of Black History Month, here is a watchlist of Humanitas Prize-winning films and TV shows written by Black writers, creators, and showrunners.
Whether you’re looking for a film, a limited series, or a sitcom, this list offers brief descriptions and links to platforms they are streaming on — Netflix, Hulu, BET+, Disney+, HBO Max, and SHOWTIME.
The Humanitas Prizes are awarded annually to honor film and television writers whose work inspires more compassion, peace, love, and dignity in the human family.
Features
2018 Humanitas Prize winner
Mudbound (screenplay by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams)
Two Mississippi families — one Black, one white — confront the brutal realities of prejudice, farming and friendship in a divided World War II era.
2015 Humanitas prize winner
12 Years a Slave (screenplay by John Ridley)
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
2011 Humanitas prize winner
Precious (screenplay by Geoffrey S. Fletcher)
Harlem teen Precious Jones has an unexpected chance at a different life when she enrolls in an alternative school.
2004 Humanitas prize winner
Antwone Fisher (screenplay by Antwone Fisher)
Antwone Fisher, a young navy man, is forced to see a psychiatrist after a violent outburst against a fellow crewman. During the course of treatment a painful past is revealed and a new hope begins.
Limited series
2020 Humanitas prize winner
When They See Us (screenplay by Ava DuVernay, Julian Breece, Attica Locke, Robin Swicord, and Michael Starrbury)
Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on the true story.
1978 Humanitas prize winner
Roots (adapted for television by William Blinn)
From Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning book comes the stirring, sweeping saga of his unforgettable family and its struggle over many generations to survive slavery and regain freedom — Roots.
Indie Feature
2014 Humanitas Prize winner
Fruitvale Station (screenplay by Ryan Coogler)
A young man resolves to be a better man until tragic violence interferes.
2009 Humanitas prize winner
A Raisin in the Sun (screenplay by Paris Qualles)
A Black family struggles with poverty, racism, and inner conflict as they strive for a better way of life. Based on the play by Lorraine Hansberry.
2001 Humanitas prize winner
Love and Basketball (screenplay by Gina Prince-Bythewood)
A young African-American couple navigates the tricky paths of romance and athletics in this drama. Starring Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan, Dennis Haysbert and Alfre Woodard.
Family Feature
2001 Humanitas prize winner
The Color of Friendship (screenplay by Paris Qualles)
Two girls from different backgrounds come together and change each other’s lives. Mahree, a girl living in apartheid South Africa, and Piper, the daughter of a congressman in Washington, D.C., must spend a semester together at Piper’s house. After realizing that their preconceptions of each other were wrong, they have to face their assumptions and learn the true color of friendship.
30 Minute Television
2017 Humanitas prize winner
black-ish (created by Kenya Barris)
“black-ish” takes a fun yet bold look at one man’s determination to establish a sense of cultural identity for his family with comedic stories that shine a light on current events through the lens of the Johnson family.
2004 & 2005 Humanitas Prize Winner
The Bernie Mac Show (created by Larry Wilmore)
In an unsentimental sitcom based on his life, comedian Bernie Mac plays a stand-up comic who, with his workaholic wife Wanda, takes in his sister's three kids while she's in rehab.