Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of thehistory of slavery to the general public.[1][2] The American film industry has had a complex relationship withslavery, and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such asThe Birth of a Nation (1915)[3] andGone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favorable depiction and helped shift theLost Cause Myth into a mainstream idea. In 1940,The Santa Fe Trail gave a strong condemnation ofabolitionistJohn Brown's attacks on slavery.[4] TheAmericancivil rights movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.[5]
Most Hollywood films used American settings, althoughSpartacus (1960) dealt with an actualslave revolt in the Roman Empire known as theThird Servile War.[6] It failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film.[7]The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by CubanTomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. The 1969 filmBurn! takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.[8]
The following dramatic and documentary films featuring slavery are listed alphabetically. (For movies portraying penal labour seethe list linked from here.)
| Film | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Years a Slave | 2013 | The film is based onthe true story ofSolomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped inWashington, D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery.[9] |
| 13th (film) | 2016 | Documentary on the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that allowed for slavery to continue for convicted prisoners. |
| 500 Years Later | 2005 | Documentary covering the onset ofslavery,colonialism subsequent, and how Africans are still struggling for basic freedom. |
| Abe Lincoln in Illinois | 1940 | The early life ofAbraham Lincoln and his rise to becoming president. |
| Abraham Lincoln | 1930 | A biopic of Abraham Lincoln and his role as president during theAmerican Civil War. |
| Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter | 2012 | An action horror film in which Lincoln hunts slave owners that also feed on their slaves. |
| Aadujeevitham | 2023 | Survival drama about an IndianMalayali migrant enslaved in a farm inSaudi Arabia. |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | 1939 | Mark Twain'stitle character befriends and takes a raft down the Mississippi River withJim, an escaped slave hoping to win his freedom. Later films of the book were also made in1960,1973 (Soviet Union filmHopelessly Lost),1974,1975,1976 (Japanese anime series), and1993. |
| Aferim! | 2015 | Tragic adventure comedy telling the story of a bounty hunter in pursuit of a Romani slave in 1835 Wallachia. |
| Aguirre, the Wrath of God | 1972 | Set in the year 1560,Gonzalo Pizarro and a band of Spanish conquistadors as well as enslaved indigenous people, venture into the jungle in search ofEl Dorado. |
| Alex Haley's Queen | 1993 | Based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley,Alex Haley's paternal grandmother. |
| Amazing Grace | 2006 | Amazing Grace is a biographical movie about the AbolitionistWilliam Wilberforce's campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, and features the role ofJohn Newton, the writer of the hymnAmazing Grace, in Wilberforce's campaign. |
| Amistad | 1997 | In 1839, aslave revolt takes place on the Spanish shipLa Amistad which isheading to Cuba. Two white survivors are ordered to navigate the ship back to Africa, but navigate the ship to the United States instead. The slaves then have to fight for their freedom in court, where they areeventually defended by ex-U.S. presidentJohn Quincy Adams.[10] |
| Antebellum | 2020 | A modern-day African-American woman must escape from a 19th-century Southern slave plantation. |
| The Arena | 1974 | In the ancient Roman city of Brundisium, a group of slave girls are forced to become gladiators. |
| A Respectable Trade | 1998 | A four-part TV miniseries based on a historical novel.[11] |
| Ashanti | 1979 | Using modern-day slave-trading and set in Africa, a white doctor goes on a journey to find his wife who was mistaken for a native woman and kidnapped by slave traders while swimming. Getting no help from the police or the local authorities, the doctor gets a lead and tracks his missing wife across the country with a couple of allies. |
| Band of Angels | 1957 | Love story set around the US Civil War in which a plantation owner with a past raises a black slave as his son and buys a posh mixed-race slave girl.[12] |
| The Barbarians | 1987 | A sword-and-sorcery saga following twin siblings who are enslaved at a young age and embark on a perilous journey seeking freedom and revenge. |
| Battlefield Earth | 2000 | In this film, humanity has been enslaved by a race known as the Psychlos.[13] |
| Being Human | 1994 | Follows a single human soul through multiple lifetimes in human history, including as a slave inAncient Rome. |
| Belle | 2013 | Story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, a mixed-race child of a British Royal Navy Officer, and her involvement in the legal case of the Zong massacre. |
| Beloved | 1998 | A former slave experiences flashbacks to her past as a slave.[10] |
| Ben-Hur | 1925,1959 &2016 | A first century Jewish prince is forced to become agalley slave. |
| The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | An American film that depictsAfrican Americans in a negative light and glorified theKu Klux Klan. |
| The Birth of a Nation | 2016 | Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to freeAfrican Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites. |
| The Book of Negroes | 2015 | A Canadian television series based onthe book of the same name. |
| Boy Slaves | 1939 | An exposé of child labor. Children entrapped inpeonage strike for better food, try to alert the government, but fail in these attempts. |
| Brother Future | 1991 | Brother Future is a science fiction movie. A street kid from Detroit, Michigan, is hit by a car, and when he awakens, he finds himself a slave in South Carolina in 1822. The boy then has to help his fellow slaves so that he can return to his own time. |
| Burn! | 1969 | Anagent provocateur is sent to the fictional island of Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean to replace the Portuguese administration by a formally sovereign state controlled by whitelatifundists friendly to Great Britain. To realize this project, the agent persuades the black slaves to fight for their liberation from slavery. |
| Caribbean Gold | 1952 | |
| Cloud Atlas | 2012 | Plotlines involving escapes from historical and futuristic forms of slavery |
| Cobra Verde | 1987 | A film about a fictional Brazilian slave overseer and trader in the era prior toBrazil's abolition of slavery. The film depicts both slavery in Brazil and the slave trade in West Africa. |
| C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America | 2004 | A faux British documentary of today reviewing American history, operating under the counter-historical premise that theConfederate States of America won theAmerican Civil War, annexed all of the United States in the process, and thereby preserved and expanded slavery throughout the nation. |
| Descendant | 2022 | The story behindAfricatown in Alabama, and the descendants of the last known enslaved Africans brought to the United States aboard theClotilda. |
| Django Unchained | 2012 | In theAmerican South in 1858, a black slave is purchased by aGermandentist turnedbounty hunter, and then agrees to help him track down a small group of outlaw plantation overseers in exchange for his freedom and the rescuing of his wife from a cruel plantation owner. |
| Doutor Gama | 2021 | The history of the BrazilianLuís Gama: a man who illegally was sold off to be enslaved as a 10 year old by his own father to pay his debts in gambling and, after he takes his freedom as a 17 year old, he grows up to be an autodidact lawyer who defended the slaves who wanted their freedom or who were enslaved despise the law. |
| Drum | 1976 | The film, a sequel toMandingo, features a black slave who falls in love with a plantation owner's daughter. When the owner threatens castration, the slave plans a revolt.[10] |
| Ebirah, Horror of the Deep | 1966 | ThisGodzilla film depicts aterrorist organization that has enslaved the inhabitants of Infant Island to manufactureheavy water. |
| El Cimarron | 2007 | Based on the life ofMarcos Xiorro who conspired and planned aslave revolt inPuerto Rico in 1821. |
| Emancipation | 2022 | A slave, played byWill Smith, escapes a plantation in 1860. Based on the real life story ofGordon. |
| Emperor | 2020 | Based on the true story ofShields Green, an African American slave who escaped and participated inabolitionistJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. |
| Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble | 2000 | The film depicts the story of British actress and abolitionistFanny Kemble, who becomes horrified bythe treatment of her husband's enslaved people. Fanny later publishes her journals and theirfirst-hand accounts of slavery, helping influence the British government's decision to withhold support of theConfederacy during theAmerican Civil War.[14][15] |
| Escrava Isaura | 1976 | Brazilian television miniseries set in the 1860s. |
| Exodus: Gods and Kings | 2014 | This film is inspired by the biblical episode ofThe Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt led byMoses and related in theBook of Exodus.[citation needed] |
| Exterminate All the Brutes | 2021 | The four-part series followscolonization and multiplegenocides, and the effect of both, alongsideimperialism andwhite supremacy. |
| The Foxes of Harrow | 1947 | Covering approximately the years 1827–1837, an illegitimate son of an Irish aristocratic family comes to America. He is a gambler and scoundrel who acquires a large plantation with many slaves, and builds an empire in antebellumNew Orleans. The movie was the first based upon a book written by an African-American writer.[10] |
| Free State of Jones | 2016 | Disenchantedconfederate soldiers rally with runaway slaves to establish an abolitionist colony in Mississippi, led byNewton Knight, who fathers a child with a black woman. That story is framed by the one of his great-grandsons, who is prosecuted in 1948 for attempting to marry a white woman while possibly being of mixed descent. |
| Frederick Douglass and the White Negro | 2008 | A documentary telling the story of ex-slave,abolitionist, writer and politicianFrederick Douglass and his escape to Ireland from America in the 1840s. |
| Freedom | 2014 | In the United States in the 1850s, a black man attempts to free his family from a tobacco plantation.[9] |
| Ganga Zumba | 1963 | Not released until 1972 because of a military coup in Brazil, the film highlightsGanga Zumba, a 17th-century slave revolutionary. |
| Gladiator | 2000 | A Roman general in the 2nd century A.D. is turned into a slave who must fight for his life, and his country, as agladiator. |
| Glory | 1989 | During theAmerican Civil War, an escaped slave joins an all-black fighting unit of theUnion Army.[10] |
| Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | 2024 | The main antagonist is a great ape ofKong's species known as the Skar King who, alongside an army of likewise red painted ape guards, enslaves a colony of apes to mine for earthly materials. |
| Gold Coast | 2015 | A Danish botanist was dispatched to Africa in 1836 meets the brutality of theDanish slave trade. |
| Goodbye Uncle Tom | 1971 | Addio Zio Tom is a pseudo-documentary in which the filmmakers go back in time and visit antebellum America, using period documents to examine, in graphic detail, the racist ideology and degrading conditions faced by Africans under slavery.[10] |
| Gone with the Wind | 1939 | The film features a slave nursemaid as a prominent supporting character. ActressHattie McDaniel wonBest Supporting Actress, becoming the firstAfrican American woman to win anAcademy Award.[10] |
| Harriet | 2019 | Based on the true story ofHarriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery then worked to free hundreds more. |
| The Horse Soldiers | 1959 | Follows a fictionalized Union cavalry raid in which a plantation mistress and slave are taken captive to maintain secrecy. |
| A House Divided: Denmark Vesey's Rebellion | 1982 | A 1982 television film about Denmark Vesey, a literate skilled carpenter and former slave who planned a slave rebellion in 1822 in Charleston, South Carolina. |
| I Am Slave | 2010 | A U.K. television story of one woman's fight for freedom from modern-day slavery, based on the experience ofMende Nazer, a British author, human rights activist, and a formerslave in Sudan. |
| Ill Gotten Gains | 1997 | Independent film about theAtlantic slave trade |
| Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom | 1984 | In the film,enslaved children are forced to mine for Sankara stones. |
| Jefferson in Paris | 1995 | The film shows the relationship betweenThomas Jefferson, who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a slave owner, andSally Hemings, a biracial slave.[10] |
| Joseph | 1995 | The biblical story ofJoseph and his brothers. Joseph is an Egyptian slave who earns a reputation as an interpreter of dreams. |
| Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | 1999 | Joseph's biblical story portrayed in a musical byAndrew Lloyd Webber, starredDonny Osmond as Joseph. |
| Joseph: Beloved Son, Rejected Slave, Exalted Ruler | 2015 | Joseph's biblical story portrayed in an animated, religious drama. |
| Joseph: King of Dreams | 2000 | The Biblical story of Joseph portrayed in an animated musical. |
| The Journey of August King | 1995 | A widowed farmer reluctantly provides safe passage to a run-away slave as he returns home from an annual trip to purchase provisions and supplies, starringJason Patric as August King andThandie Newton as Annalees. |
| The Keeping Room | 2014 | The film takes place during theAmerican Civil War. Three women in the South have to protect their home against soldiers of theUnion Army.[9] |
| K.G.F: Chapter 1 | 2018 | A Kannada movie based on a True story of a gold mine in Kolar and its slaves |
| Kuruvi | 2008 | |
| The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman | 1974 | American television film based on the novel of the same name by Ernest J. Gaines. |
| The Last Supper | 1976 | Aplantation owner duringSpanish colonial times recreates the last supper using slaves, in order to teach them aboutChristianity. |
| The Legend of Nigger Charley | 1972 | Theblaxploitation film takes place in America in theAntebellum South. It follows three slaves seeking their freedom. |
| The Legend of Tarzan | 2016 | George Washington Williams convincesTarzan (John Clayton III, the Earl of Greystoke) to travel back to Africa to investigate claims of an ongoing slave trade. |
| Lincoln | 2012 | Near the end of theAmerican Civil War, PresidentAbraham Lincoln pushes to abolish slavery in the U.S. by urging Congress to pass theThirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[10] |
| The Littlest Rebel | 1935 | |
| Manderlay | 2005 | Set in the early 1930s, the film tells the story of Grace, an idealist who attempts to oust the owners of a plantation in Alabama and free the slaves living there. |
| Mandinga (film) | 1976 | Italian film inspired by Mandingo.[16] |
| Mandingo | 1975 | A slave owner insists that his son, who is sleeping with the slaves, marry a white woman and father him a son. He marries, and trains a Mandingo slave to be a bare-knuckle fighter. |
| Motherland | 2010 | Documentary sequel to500 Years Later, the film gives an overview of the history of the African continent and its people from Ancient Egypt to the present. |
| Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property | 2003 | Documentary film about Nat Turner |
| Nightjohn | 1996 | A young slave girl, Sarny, is taught to read by John, a slave who has given up freedom in the Northern United States in order to teach slaves how to read. |
| North and South | 1985–1994 | A three-part TV miniseries outlining the period leading to and during the American civil war, and the post-warReconstruction. |
| The North Star | 2016 | The film is based on "the true story of Big Ben Jones, a slave who escaped from a Southern plantation in 1848 and is helped by localQuakers".[9] |
| Passage du milieu | 1999 | Docudrama about atrans-Atlanticslave ship voyage of black slaves from the West Coast of Africa to the Caribbean, a part of thetriangular slave trade route called theMiddle Passage. |
| Paradesi | 2013 | A Tamil language movie that is based on true events that took place in a tea plantation during the 1930s. |
| Prince Among Slaves | 2006 | APBS historical documentary about the life ofAbdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, a prince from West Africa who was made a slave in the United States and freed 40 years later on orders of the American president,John Quincy Adams. |
| The Prince of Egypt | 1998 | Former PrinceMoses frees the Hebrew slaves from thePharaoh ofEgypt. |
| The Quest for Freedom | 1992 | The life of escaped slave and abolitionistHarriet Tubman |
| Quilombo | 1984 | Account ofQuilombo dos Palmares, a 17th-century Brazilian community of escaped slaves. Features its one-time leader,Zumbi. |
| Raiders of the Seven Seas | 1953 | |
| The Retrieval | 2013 | During the American Civil War, a young free boy is sent north by his bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted fugitive slave. |
| Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury (Portuguese:Uma História de Amor e Fúria) | 2013 | A Brazilian animated drama film following important moments in Brazil's history, including slavery. |
| Roots | 1977 | An acclaimed eight-episode TV mini-series based onAlex Haley's biography about his family moving from slavery to liberation.[10] |
| Roots | 2016 | A four-episode remake of the 1977 miniseries. |
| Roots: The Gift | 1988 | A film portraying events occurring between the second and third episodes of the first miniseries. |
| Sankofa | 1993 | In the supernatural film, an African American model travels toGhana and is transported back in time by a local mystic. The model finds herself a slave in the past.[10] |
| Santa Fe Trail | 1940 | Western centered around abolitionistJohn Brown, his attacks on slavery as a prelude to the Civil War, and the attempt to find his hideout and stop his violent campaign. |
| Savannah | 2013 | Loosely based on the bookDucks, Dogs and Friends, the film is about a white hunter who befriends a freed slave.[9] |
| Seven Angry Men | 1955 | Follows John Brown's campaign to end slavery and his raid onHarper's Ferry. |
| The Slave Hunters | 2010 | Slave hunter goes after an escaped General-turned-slave in this South Korean 24-episode television series. |
| Slaves | 1969 | Follows the life of two slaves in the American South of the 1850s. |
| Slavers [de] | 1977 | Two competing slave traders fight between each other for the monopoly on the slave trade.[17] |
| Slavery and the Making of America | 2005 | American slavery history including slavery during theAmerican Civil War. |
| Slavery by Another Name | 2012 | Adaptation of thebook into a 90-minute documentary film. |
| Skin Game | 1971 | American independent comedy western |
| Solomon Northup's Odyssey | 1984 | The film is based on the true story ofSolomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped inWashington, DC in 1841 and sold into slavery.[18] |
| Spartacus | 1960,2004,2010-2013 | InSpartacus, a film that stays close to the historical record,[19] aThracian enslaved as a gladiator by theRoman Republic leads aslave revolt that engulfs much of the Italian peninsula. The Netflix seriesRoman Empire has an episode on Caesar and his war againstSpartacus in Season 2 episode 1. |
| Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace | 1999 | Anakin Skywalker and his mother are slaves onTatooine and the former is freed by the Jedi after winning a podracing competition.[20] |
| Stealing a Nation | 2004 | Recounts the experiences of the people of theChagos Islands in the Indian Ocean by the establishment of an American military base.Video |
| Tamango | 1958 | A slave ship crosses the Atlantic, and the slaves rebel. A film byHollywood blacklisted directorJohn Berry starringDorothy Dandridge andCurd Jürgens. |
| The Ten Commandments | 1923 &1956 | Biblical story of the life ofMoses, an adoptedEgyptian prince who becomes the deliverer of his real brethren, the enslavedHebrews. |
| Toussaint Louverture | 2012 | French language film based on the life ofToussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian emancipation revolution. |
| Tula: The Revolt | 2013 | In 1795 onCuraçao, then a Dutch colony, a slave uprising takes place.[9] |
| The Viking | 1928 | Lord Alwin is captured in a Viking raid and taken to Norway as a slave.[21] |
| Unchained Memories | 2003 | AnHBO documentary featuring the stories of former slaves interviewed during the 1930s as part of theFederal Writers' Project. It compiles slave narratives which are narrated by actors emulating the original conversation with the interviewer. |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | 1903 | Many film adaptations ofHarriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel have been made, nine from the silent era (including those of1910,1918, and1927), and aGerman version in 1965. |
| Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide | 2007 | Film about the residential school state system in Canada and its impact on indigenous peoples.[22] |
| Utopia | 2013 | A documentary film about Indigenous Australians and the impact ofsettler colonialism on them.Video |
| Welcome II the Terrordome | 1995 | A Britishdystopianscience fiction–drama film that follows the interactions of a black family and supporting characters reincarnated from theIgbo Landing to a fictional modernghetto.[23][24] |
| A Woman Called Moses | 1978 | A miniseries about the life and career of theAfrican American abolitionist and slave escape leader,Harriet Tubman. |
| A Woman Captured | 2017 | A documentary about a woman who is kept as domestic slave in Europe.[25][26] |
| Yambaó | 1956 | Mexican film about the life ofYambaó, a youngmulatta with supposed black magic powers who fell in love with the master of a sugar cane plantation inCuba in 1850. Starring the MexicanRumberas film starNinón Sevilla. |
| Zama | 2017 | The film is set in the late 18th century in a remote South American colony under theSpanish Empire, and portrays the period's "naturalness of slavery".[27] |
