The Festival Film · S.O.U.L. Fest 2026
Black Is Beautiful
The Kwame Brathwaite Story
Newcastle · Birmingham · London / 5–11 September 2026
Everyone knows the phrase. Almost nobody knows the man.
Last chance on a big screen After September the film moves to streaming. These three nights are the only remaining chances to see it in a cinema.
Working from Harlem across seven decades, photographer and activist Kwame Brathwaite captured half a million images — intimate portraits of everyday Black life alongside Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali and Nina Simone — always choosing beauty and joy over trauma. He pioneered grassroots fashion shows that heralded natural Black beauty when doing so was a radical act.
When his son uncovered the archive after Kwame’s death in 2023, the world caught up. Yemi Bamiro’s documentary traces that rediscovery — with Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, Gabrielle Union, Jesse Williams and Tyler Mitchell bearing witness to images that dared to say: we are enough, exactly as we are.
To be free and Black is political. To capture for all eternity the beauty and the freedom of Blackness is the most radical act there is.
Three cities, three nights
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Director Yemi Bamiro and producer Joanna Boateng take part in a Q&A at all three screenings. Tickets are sold by each venue. After September the film goes to streaming — these are the last dates in a cinema, and the only ones with the filmmakers in the room.
Access, prices and concessions are listed on each venue’s own booking page. Sold out? Venues release returns — it is worth checking again on the day.
The film
Last chance on
a big screen
After September, Black Is Beautiful moves to streaming. This is a film about photographs — half a million of them — and it earns the room, the dark and the people around you. Three nights, three cities, and the filmmakers there in person.
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