woman. But putting that aside, the film does so much of the work that I hope for from a Black film. It has sympathy for its Black characters. They’re in the midst of a citywide riot, the police are girding for battle, and the film posits the uprising as understandable given the conditions of the Black community at the time. The white officers in the movie tend to be evil and angry or incompetent followers, standing in stark contrast to John Boyega’s Black security guard, who’s disarming and intelligently stealthy in his approach to the white officers, allowing him to slide into the hotel and work both sides, quietly helping some of the Black victims. The horror scene inside the Algiers is written from the point of viewhave. Even a film like Detroit—centered on a moment from hell and the real story of the harrowing death of several young Black people—can make you feel more powerful because the film privileges the Black perspective and is unflinching about our reality. We can face the pain and horror together.