This one documentary even debunks the threats to remove Black history from schools. Watch 'Descendant' and then talk to me about the hazards of teaching Black history to white kids. Because the descendants of the Clotilda are not just Black people.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 14, 2023

The result is a powerful account of a living history. That which happened doesn't just end because time passes. The consequences and pain reverberate through generations.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 20, 2023

[Brown] finds a remarkable network of shared oral history, passed on from one generation to the next, despite repeated warnings to not tell their story.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 3, 2023

Descendant is one of the most powerful documentaries this year & yet one of the most important to make sure to never forget. The amount of raw footage, storytelling and devotion to these mass of people is so inspiring to see caught on film. A MUST WATCH!

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 28, 2022

Has the self-awareness not merely to put Black voices at the center, where they belong, but to underline those moments when white people step up and intervene in the situation—sometimes as allies and advocates, sometimes to stake their own claim.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 19, 2022

...an act of documentary journalism aimed at keeping African-American history alive.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 17, 2022

An important journey that is hampered, unfortunately, by a lack of focus during the voyage. However, the core story of history, remembrance, and restitution is so compelling.

| Dec 14, 2022

Boasting a wealth of vivid subjects, this new picture illustrates in clear terms how the country’s past sins still stain communities, the damage perhaps permanent.

| Dec 14, 2022

Descendant masterfully lets the descendants of the Clotilda survivors take back the narratives and tell the story that they and their ancestors’ oppressors have long kept buried. But this time, we can finally hear them loud and clear.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2022

A thematically rich documentary about the last ship to bring enslaved people to the United States.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Llayered and trenchant.

| Nov 8, 2022

Brown weaves together a tight, deeply resonant, narrative, entrenching a crucial piece of Black history into the public record – a piece of Black history that’s in danger of slipping away forever.

| Nov 8, 2022

The notion of misery tourism and the much pricklier subject of reparations both arise in Descendant. This documentary does what some of the best in its genre do: raises more questions than it answers — the kinds of questions we need to be asking.

| Nov 7, 2022

Brown's knack for storytelling and technical mastery make her latest effort a step above her peers.

| Original Score: A-minus | Nov 4, 2022

We meet so many people in Descendant who could be the primary subjects of their own documentaries, and Brown deftly peels back the layers of all of their stories and makes them heard.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2022

An insightful investigation historical documentary.

| Original Score: B | Nov 4, 2022

A cinemascope examination of how the stories of the descendants of the slave ship Clotilde are seen as an abstraction to be made into something concrete for the white world, equal parts Beloved and Chinatown.

| Nov 4, 2022

[Descendant] errs on the side of a cautious and tempered optimism which suggests that some rifts are destined to be forever unbridgeable.

| Nov 1, 2022

What Descendant initially renders into something of a suspenseful hunt for the truth barely lasts for half of the movie -- alerting us to the fact that it is not the only thing on the movie’s mind.

| Oct 31, 2022

Descendant can feel a bit protracted and meandering. But it makes very vivid just how immediate the legacy of slavery is in parts of the South, and why reparations represent a legitimate means of redressing historic wrongs that linger.

| Oct 31, 2022