Black Film Wire’s Top Diaspora Films of 2025

From the USA to Ghana and Zambia, here are the Top 7 Diaspora Films that made our year.

Happy New Year, everyone! 2025 might well and truly be wrapped, but not before we share these final Black Film Wire recommendations. In a year filled with outstanding feature films across the black diaspora, it was tough coming to a list of just 7. However, we did it for you. 

Our criteria for this list are two-fold: cultural impact and cinematic excellence (screenplay, directing, cinematography, etc). We sought a balance between mainstream Hollywood smashes and the finest of the indie scene. Read on to enjoy!

1. Sinners, Ryan Coogler (USA): If you somehow managed to evade every scene of this instant classic, including one involving the best musical inversion Christopher Nolan has seen since Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, then we really do not know what to say. On a second thought, we do: “Go see it now!” Sinners featured some of the year’s best acting in an original vampire thriller that explores themes of race, spirituality, love, and family in the 1930s Mississippi Delta. Even now, this description feels like a short-sell of a career-best Michael B. Jordan performance, among other stellar showings from Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and newcomer Miles Caton. Little wonder why it's racked up nominations from the Oscars to the Golden Globes and everywhere else.

2. On Becoming A Guinea Fowl, Rungano Nyoni (Zambia): This brilliant deconstruction of patriarchal family values and sexual abuse in Zambia finally arrived on our screens this year, courtesy of A24. Before this, it had enjoyed a well-deserved stellar run on the festival circuit, claiming the Best Director prize in the 77th Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section along the way. It stars British-Zambian Susan Chardy as the film’s protagonist, Shula, who happens upon her uncle’s corpse on the road on an evening drive, setting the tone for a dark but vital representation of apathy towards patriarchy’s ills in contemporary Zambia. Rungano’s sophomore feature, after 2017’s I Am Not A Witch, is a must-see for all. 

3. One of Them Days, Lawrence Lamont (USA): SZA. Keke Palmer. A 24-hour rent deadline. Hunks. Chaos. Romance. LA. And lest we forget, Issa Rae in charge of production. Mix all of those ingredients, and you have one of the year’s best comedies, and quite frankly, best films. It’s a buddy comedy with the realest stakes since Bow Wow’s survival in Lottery Ticket (2010). But more importantly, it’s a beautiful take on the everyday reality of black people living in LA, and a healthy appraisal of friendships, and the highs and lows of romantic relationships. One of Them Days is a spiritual successor of classic flicks like the 1995 duo, Friday and Bad Boys. 

4. One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson (USA): PTA’s first film since 2021’s Licorice Pizza was one of the year’s most critically acclaimed films, and dominated its fair share of conversations, including colourful conservative commentary. It begins with the revolutionary group, The French 75, and expands into an opus of the many Americas. OBAA’s Black cast includes Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Regina Hall, and Wood Harris in moving supporting roles. It is a sharp, biting assessment of the far right and left alike, with the most tense scenes you’ve seen since Kevin Garnett had a rock in Uncut Gems. 

5. The Fisherman, Zoey Martinson (Ghana): The Fisherman is another film that had premiered on the festival scene in 2024; at the Venice Film Festival, to be exact. The awards had rolled in (UNESCO’s Fellini Medal, Ja’net Dubois Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles). On the festival circuit in 2025, which includes the African International Film Festival (AFRIFF), the Black Star International Film Festival (BSIF), and the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF), the film proved why those laurels were so. It’s funny, insightful, aware of its fantastical nature, delightful in its portrayal of fisherman Atta Oko by Ricky Adelayitar, and a faithful homage to urban Ghana. Think Al Pacino in Danny Collins (2015) — not really, but both films capture that air of the older character in a life-changing experience. 

6. The Perfect Neighbour, Geeta Gandbhir (USA): In 2023, Ajike Owens was killed by neighbour Susan Louise Lorincz. Two years later, director and producer Geeta Gandbhir pieced together police bodycam footage in a chilling Netflix documentary that’s better seen than described. 

7. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, Kahlil Joseph (USA): When is a documentary essay something more? Perhaps, when it crosses into that realm of super-archival material, attempting to define and redefine a concept as complex as ‘Blackness’ like Kahlil Joseph does in this extended version of his 2020 Sundance Film Festival video installation. It’s a moving — literally and otherwise — evocation of ‘being black’ fashioned from the lens of W.E.B. DuBois, the 1999 Encyclopedia Africana, Agnes Varda, the Middle Passage, and so much more into a culture kaleidoscope. Even with all these, BLKNWS remains a deeply personal film, an ode of sorts to Kahlil’s late father and brother.