twenty fantastic films about Black women breaking bad • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

There’s a trope that used to land like a dirty word when it came to Black female representation: the Angry Black Woman. Growing up, it was one of a handful of things you’d dread association with—but, in hindsight, that dread feels foolish. Anger is an essential, inescapable emotion, but even now, stipulations stand between a Black woman and that natural sensation. It’s a maddening double standard, seeing as, for example, the John Wicks of the world are venerated for their rage. There are precious few Black female icons who personify revenge in that same way, and that’s as much because of the misogynoir that pervades every industry as it is to the double standards that marginalized storytellers face in film.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Black women can’t get theirs: a rising tide lifts all boats, after all. As we see a steady surge in “good for her” cinema—where heroines (or, let’s be real, antiheroines) get their happily ever after, no matter the cost—sisters are also doin’ it for themselves. Not every Black-led revenge thriller is a perfect ten: for every Widows, there’s a guilty pleasure playing fast and loose with the logistics of bank robbery, with groan-inducing results. But we need the good as well as the bad—all the better to canonize a new image of the Angry Black Woman. Below, we celebrate twenty films about Black female leads in search of revenge, justice or the reparations they’ve long coveted.