This is highly sensuous filmmaking, not only in its vivid close-ups of flesh, food, and the natural world, but in the varied textures of[ Khalik] Allah's cinematography.

| Mar 24, 2020

The effect of watching this movie is very emotional and sensual. It's overwhelming on both those levels.

| Sep 28, 2019

Allah, who directed, shot, edited, and co-scored the film, avoids the literal and the linear to create a beguilingly immersive, multifaceted, vividly sensorial portrait of his mother's homeland, Jamaica.

| May 21, 2019

An eternal nurturer, the black mother whom Allah dissects and praises in this transfixing hymn of a movie about the place where the woman that gave him life was born is far more than just a homeland but a direct link to the answers about existence.

| May 10, 2019

Like the culturally complex and often overwhelming island nation itself, Black Mother is a haunting and singular experience unlike any other.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 11, 2019

With its almost palpable earnestness and its reverence for the community it's depicting, Black Mother can't help but generate goodwill.

| Mar 21, 2019

Many filmmakers are journeymen, able to work their craft. A few are artists, who, if they had a different calling, would be painters, sculptors or poets. This New York-born director fits into the latter category.

| Mar 8, 2019

Allah-who shot, directed, edited and sound designed his film-manages to paint a complex portrait of the island, making his visually unconventional depiction of the land come into sharp focus one provocative shot at a time.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 8, 2019

In its poetic, elliptical, concise way, this film makes a grand statement: The black mother is the mother of life itself.

| Mar 6, 2019

Black Mother can at times feel nebulous, but the richness of lived experience that it captures, augmented by Allah's transportive gestures, are more than enough to compensate.

| Original Score: B | Mar 6, 2019

Earthy and elevated, sober and stoned, Khalik Allah's Black Mother is a tone poem whose sonic elements augment a lush and varied collection of images of Jamaica, the birthplace of Allah's mother.

| Mar 5, 2019

Allah-the movie's director, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor-assembles a grand-scale and intricately detailed mosaic of personal, civic, and mythic portraiture in a mere seventy-six minutes.

| Mar 4, 2019

The experience is almost too much to process on a rational level, but you come away with an essential understanding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2018

It's a quality film that enriches understanding of a culture in an unconventional way and will offer more on a second viewing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2018