Regina King Makes History At The Venice Film Festival

Regina King is a three-time Emmy winner, Oscar winner, Golden Globe winner and the first Black woman to win best actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Now King has made history again by becoming the first Black woman director to be included at the Venice Film Festival.

Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night in Miami, is the first film directed by a Black woman to be selected in the festival’s 88-year history. 

According to Variety, during a Zoom press conference, King explained how her film can open the doors for other Black women directors, “Unfortunately, across the world, that’s how things seem to work. One woman gets a shot and if she does not succeed, it shuts things down for years until someone else gets a shot.”

King continued, “I am so grateful for our film to be a part of the festival but I really, really want it to perform well. There’s so much talent out there — so many talented directors — so if ‘One Night in Miami’ gets it done here, you’ll get to see a lot more of us.”

The film is a fictionalized account of Feb. 25, 1964 in Miami, Florida. Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.) and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) all they gather to discuss civil rights and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s.

See the trailer below.

One Night in Miami will be released on Amazon Prime later this year and there is already Oscar buzz.