Set under the reign of Queen Charlotte, who some historians believe was Black, Bridgerton broke norms of English period dramas by including a racially diverse cast. In an interview with NPR, Page shared his thoughts on Bridgerton’s racial diversity, saying, “I think it’s incredibly important that when we are indulging ourselves in these kind of great, big Cinderella fantasies, that everyone gets to see themselves as worthy of status and glamour and love and redemption.” He shared that in the process of creating the show, he wanted to “ to spotlight Black joy in a period drama, which is relatively unheard of and revolutionary in itself.” Since the release of Bridgerton, Page has hosted Saturday Night Live, was recently cast as the lead in the upcoming ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ film, and is rumored to be in the running for the role of James Bond.

The following year, Kaluuya portrayed W’Kabi in Black Panther, Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster Marvel film about the fictional African nation of Wakanda. In 2019, he starred in romantic crime drama Queen & Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas and written by award winning screenwriter Lena Waithe. Queen & Slim tells the story of a couple who are on the run after killing a police officer. Kaluuya will star in the upcoming film Judah and the Black Messiah, a biopic of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, set to come out in 2021. From an innovative thriller to a blockbusting superhero movie to a study of a celebrated activist, Kaluuya’s films have spanned topics and genres, making him an incredibly versatile and exciting actor to watch.

This year, she was selected as a member of the 2020 class of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.. In 2018, the film Lionheart, which she directed and starred in, was acquired by Netflix, making it the first Netflix Original out of Nigeria. This year, Lionheart was nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film as Nigeria’s first Oscars submission. However, the film was ultimately disqualified since the majority of the film is in English, while the Academy requires international submissions to have a majority of non-English dialogue.

Nnaji expressed disappointment with the decision, writing, “We did not choose who colonised us.” Although Lionheart lost out on the award opportunity, Nnaji believes the film’s Netflix acquisition will open up many other opportunities for Nigerian film, such as expanded viewership and funding opportunities from outside of the continent. Ultimately, Nnaji says she sees the deal as a “pivotal moment in the history of Nigerian cinema.”

Coel graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2012. Her final project at Guildhall, a play called Chewing Gum Dreams, received critical acclaim and was later adapted into the Channel 4 sitcom Chewing Gum, for which Coel earned two BAFTAs. Despite Chewing Gum’s success, Coel recalls difficulties in its production as she was kept out of much of the creative process. She noticed this phenomenon again when she originally pitched her series I May Destroy You to Netflix and was offered $1 Million upfront but none of the copyright. She declined this offer, and in her keynote address at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, shared that she was discouraged about the British television industry’s seeming unwillingness to extend equitable creative opportunities to underrepresented filmmakers, whom she calls “misfits.” 

This year, however, I May Destroy You finally came to the screen. BBC offered Coel full creative control of the series; she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in I May Destroy You, a fictionalized account of Coel’s own sexual assault. The series follows Arabella, a young writer in London, as she navigates her social life, relationships, and career in the wake of a traumatic sexual assault. I May Destroy You has received overwhelming praise, and is a testament to what television can achieve when production studios hand over full creative control to filmmakers like Coel.

The film is a day-in-a-life portrait of three police officers in Montfermeil, France, who have a series of increasingly fraught interactions with local youth as the day passes. Ly himself is from Montfermeil, a suburb of Paris with a large African and Arab migrant population. 

Montfermeil is also where Victor Hugo wrote the novel Les Miserables and set some of its action. Ly’s re-use of Hugo’s title highlights both the immense changes the area has experienced and the lasting truth of Hugo’s observations; Ly makes the same effort that Hugo did to empathize with each side of a conflict while remaining critical of their actions. 

Ly’s examination of the struggles citizens of Montfermeil face also pushes back against mounting anti-immigrant sentiment from France’s far-right. Les Misérables urges its viewers to understand that the migrant communities depicted in the film belong to the French tradition just as much as the characters in Hugo’s novel. 

In an interview with IndieWire, Ly spoke on the conditions which have prompted African migration to European countries like France, an issue relevant both to the film and to his own experiences as the son of Malian migrants.

“You can’t complain about immigrants coming into your country without taking the time to really think about why they are so desperate, that some risk their lives,” Ly said. “When you investigate the history of colonialism, neo-colonialism, the looting of Africa’s natural resources, and Europe and the West’s responsibility, then you will begin to understand.”

Though Star Wars had included a handful of Black actors in previous films, Boyega’s casting as Finn made him the first Black protagonist in the franchise, prompting a slew of racist campaigns by fans and industry professionals to diminish Boyega’s significance in the films. In 2015, fans supportive of Boyega were outraged as the Chinese poster for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ edited the original U.S. poster to shrink Boyega’s figure to be much smaller than his white counterparts. Since the completion of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Boyega has used his platform to speak out about the racism he has faced in his career and about systemic racism at large; he has been particularly vocal about the Black Lives Matter movement.

In March of this year, he announced that his production company, UpperRooms Productions, will be partnering with Netflix to create a series of non-English language films based in Africa. With plans for two films set in Nigeria and one set in Egypt, UpperRooms Productions said that the partnership “will develop film projects based on stories, cast, characters, crew, literary properties, mythology, screenplays and/or other elements in or around African countries,” and will build on Netflix’s growing library of African film and television.