BLACK MOTHER

OUT 2 NOVEMBER

Khalik Allah’s kaleidoscopic film is ostensibly a doc about pregnancy, but plays out as a free-form tone poem ruminating on Jamaican culture, motherhood and black identity. Deploying a mosaic of disjointed images and voiceover from (mostly unnamed) characters, Allah’s bold choices exhilarate at first but then wear thin. The lack of a clear narrative anchor doesn’t help a film that frustrates as much as it compels.