Charles Burnett Movies

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she...

An Iranian couple (Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mohsen Marzban) declare themselves political refugees after police detain them on their way to Cuba.

A Little League baseball game becomes the unlikely context for this lyrical drama about memory and loss, told from the perspective of a...

In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested...

A musician spends New Year's Day trying to help his friend pay the rent.

This video work intermingles fiction with actuality in a poignant confrontation with homelessness.

A teenage boy leaves a moment of boredom while his father works on his old car, and the mother wishes to go out for a stroll around the block. One...

Tells the poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the...

An improvised late '60s short-subject student film, and debut movie of Charles Burnett, done in the neo-realist, documentary film style. A...

Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.

After the death of his father, a former football star reunites with the family that he abandoned years earlier.

In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in the United States that resulted in the murder of local slave owners and their families, the eventual...

This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's...

A single mother ekes out a living from welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter.

Director Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, My Brother's Wedding, To Sleep with Anger) presents a tale about a young boy's encounter with his family...

Dorothy is a poor black woman. Her husband is put in jail for no observable reason, and she is pregnant with a second child. The government threatens...

Filmmaker Thomas Penick explores race, gender and violence in this provocative, disturbing drama set on a hot, summer day in 1969. When a woman...