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With a new era on the rise in many areas of society, a call for fresh faces to step forward in order to make their voices be heard will be at an all-time high. Luckily when it comes to Black Hollywood, a handful of burgeoning Black filmmakers will soon be making a debut on a screen near you if they haven’t already.
We got a preview this past summer during Lena Waithe’s “Rising Voices” competition at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. The 12 selected directors, all representing various backgrounds, were tasked with creating short films themed around the future of work. While similar in that aspect alone, each film delivered very unique stories that varied from futuristic and sci-fi-themed to the more relatable true-to-life tales that easily hit close to home.
It wasn’t hard for us to form a close connection with the featured Black filmmakers. We gave them some time to get through the festival season and work on projects soon to come, but we’ve finally caught up with our faves to get the inside scoop on their rise in the game.
Starting things off is Omar S. Kamara. He’s a first-generation Sierra Leonean American filmmaker by way of Virginia that wow’d us with his tech-savvy psychological thriller titled Bitter Leaf, a short that will have any TikTok streamer twitching in fear if his vision for the future of digital currency comes to fruition.
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“In a not-so-distant future, a burgeoning streamer is torn between her ambition and the ultimate cost of her success after joining a novel program.” The official synopsis is brief, but it’s just enough without giving away the hair-raising climax and suspense of it all. Whether you’re tapped into the Digital Age or watching from the sidelines, the Black Mirror-inspired reality that Kamara creates here is exciting to witness and leaves you wanting to see how it continues.
In the first of four back-to-back interviews with Black filmmakers on the rise, Omar walks us through his career beginnings, why African culture will always play a huge role in his projects and the message he was ultimately conveying with the tone of Bitter Leaf.
Watch below for our one-on-one with director Omar S. Kamara, and stay tuned this week as we speak with a few other “Rising Voices” in Black Hollywood: