Profound and joyful, Questlove’s documentary attempts to redress that erasure.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2024

A celebration of Black culture, history, and music, and features amazing performances from Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, and more.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 8, 2024

“Summer of Soul” feels as if it is the wistful answer to a question that viewers had after watching “Black Panther” (2018), “Where is our Wakanda?” For a moment, it was Harlem.

| Jun 12, 2024

Come for a great music doc with historic performances, and stay for a much-needed reconsideration of what exactly counts as collective "American" cultural history.

| Feb 12, 2024

Summer of Soul isn’t just music history—it’s Black history. This film is an invitation to "come home" and absolutely essential for those who want to relive the coming of age of Black music.

| Jul 19, 2023

Thank God somebody filmed it and the footage survived long enough for this doc to emerge in time to help celebrate the end of isolation.

| Sep 20, 2022

Summer of Soul is Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s (member of The Roots, filmmaker, producer, DJ) directorial debut and it is brilliant.

| Aug 14, 2022

50 years ago someone thought this was important, today it's even more important... all this wrapped up in a series of musical numbers that are really hallucinatory. I'd never seen Stevie Wonder play the drums, for example. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 18, 2022

As with the best films, Questlove's narrative is shrouded in mystery, while leaving an emotional resonance that won't be soon forgotten.

| Jul 11, 2022

What's presented is an uproarious celebration of communal pride with an emphasis on holding onto what makes a community proud.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 8, 2022

Questlove's film show the capacity for the music doco to be about so much more than music. It's one of the best examples of the genre to date.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 8, 2022

Fantastic footage, worthy of any showcase that Questlove or any other filmmaker could possibly give it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2022

... the journey that the director takes us on as eye-opening to the audience as it does to him, making some of the more emotional moments revealed within pack just a little more punch as we observe someone learning about their cultural history.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 15, 2022

Summer of Soul is more fluid and urgent than most documentaries, concert films or otherwise. It deftly blends history, culture, politics, and art with a rare harmony of breadth and depth.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Summer of Soul is a resonant, vigorous, and illuminating time machine full of emotion and ethnology. Youll come for the music and stay for the history lesson.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 11, 2022

The event seems less a 'Black Woodstock' (as it once was promoted) than a Utopian vision of Black art and community that a larger white establishment was too hostile or disinterested to validate.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 3, 2022

You say you've got soul. But do you really have soul?

| Original Score: A | Feb 3, 2022

A piece of American history thought to be lost, but that we can enjoy now in order to transport us to a very specific and important place and time. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 28, 2022

Questlove's jaw-dropping music film is an early frontrunner for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.

| Jan 4, 2022

This movie is a virtual time capsule of the Harlem Cultural Festival, put into solid historical and cultural contexts. This is no mere concert film for the 'shut up and sing' crowd. It does not ignore the pain and sorrow of the Black experience.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 16, 2021