Kimberley O'Brien: Slavery in the Movies
by kimberleyochicago | created - 10 Jul 2014 | updated - 10 Jul 2014 | PublicA list of movies depicting slavery by Kimberley O'Brien, a Chicago film lover. I'm also including TV shows and documentaries.
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
R | 134 min | Biography, Drama, History
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
Director: Steve McQueen | Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt
Votes: 741,355 | Gross: $56.67M
2. Beloved (1998)
R | 172 min | Drama, History, Horror
A slave is visited by the spirit of a mysterious young woman.
Director: Jonathan Demme | Stars: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Yada Beener, Emil Pinnock
Votes: 9,582 | Gross: $22.85M
3. Django Unchained (2012)
R | 165 min | Drama, Western
With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.
Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington
Votes: 1,695,401 | Gross: $162.81M
4. Gladiator (2000)
R | 155 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed
Votes: 1,620,408 | Gross: $187.71M
5. Glory (1989)
R | 122 min | Biography, Drama, History
Robert Gould Shaw leads the U.S. Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices from both his own Union Army, and the Confederates.
Director: Edward Zwick | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman
Votes: 144,451 | Gross: $26.83M
6. Gone with the Wind (1939)
Passed | 238 min | Drama, Romance, War
A sheltered and manipulative Southern belle and a roguish profiteer face off in a turbulent romance as the society around them crumbles with the end of slavery and is rebuilt during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood | Stars: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 334,308 | Gross: $198.68M
7. Lincoln (2012)
PG-13 | 150 min | Biography, Drama, History
As the Civil War rages on, U.S President Abraham Lincoln struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield as he fights with many inside his own cabinet on his decision to emancipate the slaves.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Votes: 272,667 | Gross: $182.21M
8. Roots (1977)
TV-14 | 74 min | Biography, Drama, History
A dramatization of author Alex Haley's family line from ancestor Kunta Kinte's enslavement to his descendants' liberation.
Stars: LeVar Burton, Robert Reed, John Amos, Louis Gossett Jr.
Votes: 18,882
9. North and South, Book I (1985)
TV-PG | 94 min | Drama, History, Romance
Two friends, one northern and one southern, struggle to maintain their friendship as events build towards the American Civil War.
Stars: Kirstie Alley, Georg Stanford Brown, David Carradine, Philip Casnoff
Votes: 11,901
10. Ben-Hur (1959)
G | 212 min | Adventure, Drama
After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet
Votes: 253,678 | Gross: $74.70M
11. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
TV-PG | 195 min | Drama, History, War
The Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper
Votes: 26,342 | Gross: $10.00M
12. Jefferson in Paris (1995)
PG-13 | 139 min | Biography, Drama, History
Widower Thomas Jefferson (3rd US president 1801-09) lives in Paris 1785-90 with his daughter. He has a pretty slave girl accompany his other daughter to France. He has an alleged affair with her resulting in children.
Director: James Ivory | Stars: Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Gwyneth Paltrow, Estelle Eonnet
Votes: 3,195 | Gross: $2.47M
13. Manderlay (2005)
Not Rated | 139 min | Drama
A story of slavery, set in the southern U.S. in the 1930s.
Director: Lars von Trier | Stars: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe
Votes: 25,181 | Gross: $0.08M
14. Spartacus (1960)
PG-13 | 197 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising.
Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Mann | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton
Votes: 143,218 | Gross: $30.00M
15. The Ten Commandments (1956)
G | 220 min | Adventure, Drama, Family
Moses, raised as a prince of Egypt in the Pharaoh's household, learns of his true heritage as a Hebrew and his divine mission as the deliverer of his people from slavery.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille | Stars: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson
Votes: 77,878 | Gross: $93.74M
16. Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003)
75 min | Documentary
When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than four million slaves were set free. Over 70 years later, the memories of some 2,000 slave-era survivors were transcribed and preserved by the ... See full summary »
Directors: Ed Bell, Thomas Lennon | Stars: Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Michael Boatman, Roscoe Lee Browne
Votes: 248
17. Uncle Tom's Cabin (1965)
R | 118 min | Drama
In the pre-Civil War South, a sadistic plantation-owner brutalizes his slaves to the point that they have no other choice but to rebel. Always obedient, peaceful, honest old slave Tom plays a central role in this tragedy.
Director: Géza von Radványi | Stars: John Kitzmiller, Herbert Lom, Olive Moorefield, O.W. Fischer
Votes: 257
18. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960)
Approved | 107 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Mark Twain's 1851 story about two runaway friends, a fostered white boy and an escaped black slave, who sailed on a raft down the Mississippi River in search of freedom and adventure.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges, Archie Moore, Patty McCormack
Votes: 1,593
19. 500 Years Later (2005)
Not Rated | 106 min | Documentary
Crime, drugs, HIV/AIDS, poor education, inferiority complex, low expectation, poverty, corruption, poor health, and underdevelopment plagues people of African descent globally - Why? 500 ... See full summary »
Director: Owen Alik Shahadah | Stars: Kolfi Adu, Sona Jobarteh, Hunter Adams III, Hakim Adi
Votes: 204
20. Brother Future (1991 TV Movie)
TV-PG | 103 min | Drama, History, Sci-Fi
A young street rapper is transported back in time to the pre-Civil War South, where he finds himself in the middle of a slave revolt.
Director: Roy Campanella II | Stars: Phill Lewis, Carl Lumbly, Michael Burgess, Akosua Busia
Votes: 228
Tell Your Friends