If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Today is MLK's actual birthday, not the one that we are celebrating next week, and this film adaptation of James Baldwin's 1974 book, and this seems a fitting remembrance of the conversation that he brought about civil rights to the forefront about a 100 years after the Civil War.  These conversations are here again today, rightly so, but this story is set in the past.  Two things about that.  It seems a safe distance from whence to judge the time, and it also serves as a talking point and an opportunity for reflection on where we are today in terms of racial bias within our society.
History at large is written by the victors, but African American history is protected and passed on by our storytellers, by people whose life lessons filled in the blanks for what was so often missing from, or corrupted by, the general narrative. The stories of the trials trials and tribulations form a generational life line that can both teach and also connect the past with the present, so long as there is someone left to tell the tale.
This story is exceptionally powerful, and I think part of it is that when an act of blatant abuse of power and racism confines an innocent man to prison, his family and friends go about putting everything they have into getting him releasing him.  There is a quiet determination, using all their resources.  They don't accept their fate, but they don't argue with it.  Which was just gut wrenching to watch, all the while it is beautifully rendered.  Just incredible in every way.