Many of us struggle to understand what love actually looks like. Not just the familiar love we feel for our friends, parents, or children but the kind that feels safe, reciprocal, and grounding and doesn’t demand self-abandonment.
In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins) wrote, “To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”
That longing – to be saved, seen, and held – has taken over our timelines. We’re flooded with “Black Love” aesthetics online, curated images and stories that feel aspirational, beautiful, and affirming. While these narratives have indeed helped counter harmful tropes about Black and African people being unlovable or undesired, there’s another side. Love content is now a brand: easily packaged, easily consumed. It suggests there’s only one way to love, one version of what a relationship should look like.
Here are a few films that explore exactly that: how love shows up, teaches us, and transforms us when we choose it for real, with a single-word descriptor capturing one core meaning of love itself.
African Romance on Screen:
- A Tale of Love and Desire (Algeria/Tunisia set in France, 2021): Passion
- All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White (Nigeria, 2023): Courage
- Atlantics (Senegal, 2019): Longing
- Farewell Amor (Angola, set in USA, 2020): Reunion
- From a Whisper (Kenya, 2008): Remembrance
- Isoken (Nigeria, 2017): Authenticity
- Rafiki (Kenya, 2018): Bravery
- Sodade (Cape Verde, 2024): Nostalgia
- Tajouje (Sudan, 1977): Devotion
- The Gravedigger’s Wife (Somalia, set in Djibouti, 2021): Resilience
Trading Places (South Africa,1983): Adaptation
The truth is, love isn’t one-size-fits-all, and we too often expect Black women to endure pain in silence as Black men constantly perform strength and provision. We carry unrealistic standards for each other and for ourselves. If we want love to redeem us – as bell hooks said – it starts with us. We must unlearn, relearn, and become people who can show up fully and honestly in love: both for ourselves and others.
