Recap: Thrills, Chills, Docs & Even RZA Highlight Urbanworld 2023

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Source: Urbanworld Film Festival

Back in the late ’90s, forward-thinking Black entrepreneur Stacy Spikes started Urbanworld Film Festival after seeing an early screening of Love & Basketball at another film festival. The now-classic Black love story, which would go on sweep the 2000-2001 awards season and also become a cultural classic, left him excited to see what other Black narratives he’d also get to preview that year. Unfortunately, he was told by someone in an executive position the harsh-yet-honest truth: “If there were more Black films good enough to show, we would.”

Now in its 27th year, Urbanworld has been the prime destination year after year since then for Black and Brown voices to be seen and heard on film. From hard-hitting documentaries to short films that left long-lasting impressions, this year’s roundup proved to not only uphold the festival’s decades-long legacy but also supersede expectations for 2023.

The five-day event, which spanned from November 1 to November 5 at the 34th Street AMC Theater in New York City, showcased upcoming Black and Brown narratives in the form of movies, television series, short films, documentaries and even a directorial debut or two in what felt like a countless variation of genres to choose from. Animation shorts, a segment dedicated to “thrillers and chillers” for some leftover Halloween fun, a docu-series on the dual lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. that we literally can’t even tell you about until late January, sports-themed shorts from all aspects of athleticism and many, many other diverse themes made for a mass rollout of standout features.

Day 1 took place at the SVA Theater for an opening night screening of the upcoming satirical comedy, American Fiction. Director Cord Jefferson stood back for a Q&A with fellow filmmaker Malcolm D. Lee to speak in detail about his feature directorial debut. Day 2, which happened to be occurring during the celebration of Día de los Muertos, dedicated a special block of programming to the spooky holiday with a round of shorts, including October Mourning (Frederick Thornton), The Old Young Crow (Liam LoPinto), Lunchbox (Anne Hu), Magic Ring (Alex Ashe), Don’t Wait Up for Me (Alain Alfaro) and Death & Ramen (Tiger Ji). Also among the screenings that night included Chronicles Of A Wandering State by Tomás Gómez Bustillo, Becoming by Tramaine Raphael Gray, Inky Pinky Ponky by Damon Fepulea’i and Ramon Te Wake, To Live And Die And Live by Qasim Basir, conversation over clips of The Marvels with Nia DaCosta and a special screening of Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story with directors Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz in attendance.

Day 2 also featured another round of shorts dedicated to the theme of “Kinfolk,” which included August Visitor (Ifeyinwa Arinze), Jerome (Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz), TikTok Challenged (Ivan Rome), Spaceship (Jorge G. Camarena), Homing (Ricardo Varona) and Cousins (Karina Dandashi). Day 3 included a daytime Urbanworld Innovation Summit event at the SVA SocDoc Theater, complete with an AI Content Creator Lab and panels on culture versus algorithm, the future of sports storytelling and the future of content distribution.

Back at the AMC Theater, a screening of Lauren Finerman’s short film Flower was one of the first of the night, complete with executive producer Nelson George and star Misty Copeland in attendance. From there, many festival standouts screened from theater to theater, including Frybread Face and Me (Billy Luther), Sira (Apolline Traore), The Space Race with featured astronaut Leland Melvin in attendance, Young Wld. Free. (Thembi L. Banks), Benny Boom’s five-minute “experimental short” titled A Love Letter To Hip Hop and his accompanying directorial feature Lights, Camera, Rhymes: 50 Years Of Hip Hop On Screen and a headlining screening of A Wu-Tang Experience: Live At Red Rocks Amphitheater by Gerald K. Barclay and RZA, who also serves as the 2023 Festival Ambassador of Urbanworld.

On the shorts side, Day 3’s theme was “It Takes Two” and included narratives that in some way reflected that, including Choices (Justin Luis Denis), Jamaal (Yvonne Orji), A Version (Asad Farooqui), Things Left Unsaid (Antonia Thornton), My Two Left Feet (Damian Gonzalez), I Held Him (Hans Augustave) and Look Back at It (Felicia Pride). Day 4, the final day of screenings before votes would be tallied up, was sponsored by ESPN’s “Day Of Play” activation, which also coincided with its “Playtime” shorts segment. This included yoga, double dutch and a dance team. Short film segments aired from morning well into the night, starting with Disney+’s “Launchpad Shorts” that included Beautiful, FL (Gabriela Ortega), Maxine (Niki Ang), The Ghost (Erica Eng), The Roof (Alexander Bocchieri), Project CC (Cashmere Jasmine) and Black Belts (Spencer Glover).

The “Roots & Culture” shorts featured Yellow (Elham Ehsas), It Smells Like Springtime (Mackie Mallison), The Burden (Tish Arana), Quiet As It’s Kept (Ja’Tovia M. Gary), Merman (Sterling Hampton IV), Duckworthy (MG Evangelista) and Part of Me: Anuar Khalifi by Yasiin Bey (Jordi Esgleas Marroi).

Getting back to “Playtime,” it was interesting to see a block of stories that showed the variety of ways that Black athletes push themselves through adversity. Short films included crowd-favorite Slice (Zaire Love), Burning Rubber (Chris Fequiere and Dara King), Over the Wall (Krystal Tingle), I Was a Soul Train Dancer (Timiza K. Sanyika), Wa Guejj Gui – Ocean People (Cle Hunnigan) and the featured Black Girls Play (Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson). A segment titled “POV Shorts” included Still Waters (Aurora Brachman), Freshwater (dream hampton), Sol in the Garden (Emily Cohen Ibañez and Débora Souza Silva), By Way of Canarsie (Emily Packer and Lesley Steele) and The Dream of a Horse (Marjan Khosravi). The “What Is Mine” shorts included Burnt Milk (Joseph Douglas Elmhirst), Bridges (Jonathan Davenport), Xiaohui and His Cows (Xinying Lao), Unerasable (Deon Ragin), Of Silence and Song (Dai Leyi) and Shallots and Garlic (Bawang Merah Bawang Putih) by Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto.

The last two set of short film screenings kept it pretty literal, titled “Stand Up, Push Back” and “Thrillers & Chillers,” respectively. The former, which called to the culture at hand, included Lil Ruby (Bartek Kik), Reunion (Zainab Jah and Tim Naylor), ExpoZure (Kimson Albert), Children of Light (Minkyu Kang), The Big Idea: Birth Without Bias (Sarah Klein and Tom Mason) and Don’t Touch My Hair (Matthew Law). The spookier side of things included Incomplete (Zoey Martinson), Perfect City: The Bravest Kid (Shengwei Zhou), The Fore-Men (Adrian Bobb), Tomato Kitchen (Junyi Xiao), Hématome (Hematoma) (Babetida Sadjo), House Party (William Alexander Boyd III) and Cut Me If You Can (Nicolas Polixene and Sylvain Loubet).

Longer-form films, documentaries and series that rounded up the night’s screenings included a premiere of Paramount+’s new mini-series Lawmen: Bass Reeves with directors Christina Alexandra-Voros and Damian Marcano, Stand Up & Shout: Songs From A Philly High School by Amy Schatz, Black Barbie: A Documentary by Lagueria Davis, Bike Vessel by Eric D. Seals, Brief Tender Light by Arthur Musah — so good it got an encore screening! — Found by DeMane Davis and a super early preview of the first in an upcoming multi-part Nat Geo series titled Genius: MLK / X. We’ll tell you more about that this coming January!

The week’s events capped off with an Awards Brunch on Day 5, where trophies and certificates were given to films voted by actual attendees of Urbanworld. See below for the full list of 2023 Urbanworld Film Festival winners:

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE (U.S.)
Frybread Face and Me – Billy Luther

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE (WORLD)
Sira – Apolline Traoré

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Brief Tender Light – Arthur Musah

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Slice – Zaire Love

BEST YOUNG CREATOR
The Old Young Crow – Liam LoPinto

BEST NARRATIVE SHORT (U.S.)
Spaceship – Jorge G. Camarena

BEST NARRATIVE SHORT (WORLD)
Yellow – Elham Ehsas

BEST ANIMATION SHORT
Tomato Kitchen – Junyi Xiao

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Quiet As It’s Kept – Ja’Tovia M. Gary

BEST SCREENPLAY
Long Live AJ – written by Marvin Van Buren

URBANWORLD AUDIENCE AWARD BEST SHORT
Homing – Ricardo Varona

URBANWORLD AUDIENCE AWARD BEST FEATURE
Brief Tender Light – Arthur Musah

NYWIFT AWARD for BEST FEMALE DIRECTOR, US NARRATIVE FEATURE
Sira – Directed by Apolline Traoré

NYWIFT AWARD for BEST FEMALE DIRECTOR, US NARRATIVE SHORT
Lunch Box – Anne Hu
Reunion – Zainab Jah