Descendant

Name: Descendant
Genre: History, Documentary
Released: October 21, 2022
Duration: 109 min
Rating: 87

2022

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 13 Critic Reviews

See All

USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 6 Ratings

See All

7.2

VOTE NOW

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7.2	Your Score
7.2	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 6 Ratings

Would you like to write a review?

There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. Please do not use ALL CAPS. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. Your review may be edited for content. 0/5000

Check box if your review contains spoilers

Play Sound

Please enter your birth date to watch this video:

You are not allowed to view this material at this time.

Descendant

Now Playing: Descendant

Movie Details & Credits

Netflix | Release Date: October 21, 2022 | Not Rated

Summary: Descendant tells the story of the Clotilda - the last known ship to smuggle stolen Africans to America - the unthinkable cover-up, and the impact of that crime on generations of descendants living in Africatown. Once the past is revealed, can the future be reclaimed?

Director: Margaret Brown

Genre(s): History, Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 109 min

See All Details and Credits

Watch Now

Stream On

Metascore

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

100

Jake Coyle

Oct 20, 2022

There is a searching, ruminative dialogue running throughout the film. Brown and editors Michael Bloch and Geoffrey Richman beautifully weave together disparate voices into a meditative chorus. Read full review

100

Lisa Kennedy

Oct 21, 2022

If you’ve ever wondered what “holding space” looks like in practice, the director Margaret Brown’s deeply attentive documentary Descendant provides moving examples. Read full review

100

RogerEbert.com Odie Henderson

Oct 21, 2022

Descendant is worth seeing no matter who you are. For viewers like me, however, it engenders the reality that, no matter how hard anyone tries to whitewash history, our stories will forever continue to be told in full, by us and for us. Read full review

The Film Stage Jordan Raup

Oct 21, 2022

With remarkably immediate cinematography and an intimate understanding of its subjects, Descendant becomes an essential ideal of how to tell a community’s story: not through distant talking heads, but capturing moving bodies through land and history, giving a voice to those that can often feel powerless. Read full review

The Guardian Lauren Mechling

Oct 21, 2022

The treasure in this story is not a sunk vessel, as the interviews with its more literal-minded subjects might suggest, but a sense of justice and equilibrium that has been denied to a people that have been passing down their trauma from one generation to the next. Read full review

Robert Abele

Oct 20, 2022

With Descendant, Brown wisely chooses to be respectfully, poetically alert instead of imposing, as her use of archival footage shot by Hurston suggests: She’s adding to a pioneering Black filmmaker’s anthropological empathy, updating the conversation, witnessing the witnessers. Read full review

K. Austin Collins

Oct 31, 2022

With a single shot, Descendant ceases to be a story about the recovery of a ship. It rapidly morphs into something broader: a story about the land. Who owned it back in the 1800s, who owns it now, and what all of this means for everyone else. Read full review

SEE ALL 13 REVIEWS

Write a Review

Mixed:

User Reviews

alanpotter17

Oct 29, 2022

A fotografia do filme é linda, e a metáfora com o elemento marítimo funciona, afinal, foi na travessia de um oceano que toda essa história começou.
A edição deixou um pouco a desejar em suas variações, monótonas algumas vezes, poderiam, por exemplo, encurtar um pouco. Mas é inegável a forçaA fotografia do filme é linda, e a metáfora com o elemento marítimo funciona, afinal, foi na travessia de um oceano que toda essa história começou.
A edição deixou um pouco a desejar em suas variações, monótonas algumas vezes, poderiam, por exemplo, encurtar um pouco. Mas é inegável a força do argumento, e ainda de quebra você transforma a "Africatown" num espaço de resistência combinadas, para onde convergem as lutas antirracistas, ambientalistas, anticapacitistas, a favor da ciência, a favor da história e a favor da preservação das comunidades locais. É muito difícil equilibrar isso com a visão limitada que temos sobre o que é desenvolvimento.
É um filme que valoriza a tradição, o passado, o retorno às origens. Ver a superficialidade do mundo hoje, dominado pelo presente, cada vez mais ansioso, de certa forma torna a experiência um alento: o filme trata do processo histórico como forma de identificação de seu povo. E aos que construíram o "Clotilda" (o último navio negreiro que fora à América), restou-lhes o silêncio dos covardes.
Como brasileiro, sinto tanta falta disso, falta de espaços que tragam à lembrança nosso passado escravocrata, ou mesmo nosso passado ditatorial. Que o cinema seja sempre resistência!… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Brent_Marchant

Feb 6, 2023

Contrary to widely held belief, just because the US slave trade was outlawed in 1808, that didn’t end attempts to continue to import African slaves thereafter. It wasn’t until 1860, when the last slave ship, the Clotilde, entered American waters with a hold full of slaves that the practiceContrary to widely held belief, just because the US slave trade was outlawed in 1808, that didn’t end attempts to continue to import African slaves thereafter. It wasn’t until 1860, when the last slave ship, the Clotilde, entered American waters with a hold full of slaves that the practice finally came to an end. And, to conceal this crime, which was punishable by death, the perpetrators scuttled the ship by burning it upon arrival. The location of the wreckage long remained a mystery until a diving team found it in shallow water just north of Mobile, AL in 2018-19. But the discovery was more than just an archaeological curiosity; it was also significant to the descendants of the Clotilde slaves, many of whom settled in a nearby community called Africatown when they achieved freedom after the Civil War in 1865. Those living today now have actual proof of their African lineage, as well as evidence of the crime that was committed against their ancestors. Director Margaret Brown’s fourth feature outing explores this story from multiple angles in terms of its historic and personal importance, as well as from all of the fallout that stemmed from their ancestors’ experience that has carried through to this day. Given the myriad threads presented in this documentary, the focus admittedly could have been a little tighter in spots, particularly in terms of how the narrative’s many dots connect. But, that aside, the film effectively chronicles a little-known story that represents a significant benchmark in African-American history and a potential turning point in terms of how the American public at large views the question of this appalling institution and its after-effects, some of which have lingered but have gone virtually unaddressed and, arguably, even unrecognized all these years. This is a fine film that should be part of every grade school history class and a welcome addition to African-American History Month viewing.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

SEE ALL 2 REVIEWS