Friday

For years, Kahlil Joseph has been the most innovative and important filmmaker not working in feature films — a title that will officially be retired when his highly lauded “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” gets a 12-city theatrical release on November 28, 2025. That’s right, the film’s distributor, Rich Spirit, is announcing today — in a move that would make the film’s former distributor A24 blush — it will open the film, remixing Black history and culture, on Black Friday.

Rich Spirit’s press release makes clear that, like “BLKNWS” itself, releasing the film on the biggest shopping day of the year is both playful and deadly serious.

“The date ties the film’s release to global conversations about media, capitalism, and the Black archive amid renewed conversations about erasure, representation, and the rollback of civil rights,” per the official Rich Spirit press release. “BLKNWS on BLKFRDY arrives in theaters as both a cinematic and cultural event for audiences in targeted markets, aiming to subvert a day of commercial excess into a moment of Black collective reflection and cultural circulation. BLKNWS sells perspective.”

The 12 cities for theatrical release were chosen because they trace “a constellation of Black cultural capitals across the U.S., Canada, and Europe,” and include Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington DC, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Toronto, London, and Paris.

After initially being pulled from the Sundance 2025 lineup by the film’s original backers Participant — only to be rescheduled at the last minute to unceremoniously premiere at a 9 am screening — “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” has gone on to be properly feted at major festivals, including a prestigious Main Slate slot at last month’s New York Film Festival, along with Berlinale, BlackStar, Toronto, and London premieres. In addition to gaining glowing reviews (100 on Rotten Tomatoes, 87 on MetaCritic) and ardent admirers, Joseph’s feature debut won the FIPRESCI Award at Viennale 2025 and shared the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the Documentary Feature Competition at the Montclair Film Festival.

The late November release should place the film squarely in competition to make the Academy’s Best Feature Documentary shortlist — IndieWire has confirmed Rich Spirit will target nonfiction awards with the innovative film that incorporates a fictional Afrofuturistic storyline.

Joseph is not your typical first-time feature filmmaker, having made his name in the 2010s as the most vital music video director of his generation, creating an influential approach to images in his collaboration with the world’s most prominent musicians, and finding full expression in short form projects like the 2013 “Until the Quiet Comes,” for musician Flying Lotus, which won the Grand Jury Short Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival; the 15-minute film about Compton in “good kid, m.A.A.d city” for Kendrick Lamar; as well as being the original visionary behind Beyoncé’ “Lemonade.”

Joseph has never been interested in linear narratives, thinking of his work as more akin to how a musician approaches an album. Inspired by filmmakers like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Terrence Malick (who Joseph worked for early in his career), Joseph prefers to use sound and music to evoke lyricism and complexity rather than rely on a traditional narrative. Following in the footsteps of one of his idols and mentors (and “BLKNWS” contributor) Arthur Jafa, the celebrated music video director gravitated more toward the art world than Hollywood, while also serving as the creative director of Underground Museum in LA, which was the passion project of Joseph’s late brother, artist Noah Davis.

“BLKNWS” was born out of the Underground Museum, initially dreamed up by Joseph and Ryan Coogler as an antidote to cable news during President Trump’s 2015 campaign. It was conceived as a continuous, curated broadcast, weaving news and social media clips, and cultural artifacts into a dynamic stream intended to reflect the richness of Black life.

On an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Joseph explained how “BLKNWS” grew out him increasingly watching YouTube in his free time.

“I assumed if I was [watching YouTube over television], everybody else was doing that too. And I got the sense too that people were excited about learning in a way that I don’t think the entertainment industry takes into account,” said Joseph on the podcast. “People want to learn stuff, that’s what YouTube is so exciting for. You can learn about anything, as much as you can watch music videos and content creators, most of the time, people are sharing knowledge and information, and not just opinions.”

Joseph brought on  editors Luke Lynch and Paul Rogers (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), and together they started downloading YouTube clips and cutting them together as they experimented in finding the turntable-esque remix language of the cinematic news experience. Early versions were showcased at the 2019 Venice Biennale and the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, as Joseph saw “BLKNWS” more as a platform and media company with the potential to reach beyond the world of art installation. While on the podcast, Joseph admitted he contemplated accepting venture capital investment offers to build out the media company, but when the pandemic hit, he decided first on an intermediary step, accepting A24’s offer to turn it into a feature film.

While on the podcast, Joseph discussed the lengthy and unorthodox process of turning his project into a feature film, which included bringing artists, journalists, and thinkers aboard, including Jafa, Bradford Young, Onye Anyanwu, Saidiya Hartman, Kaneza Schaal, Garrett Bradley, Raven Jackson, Jomo Fray, Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Kristen Adele Calhoun, Irvin Hunt, and Madebo Fatunde, alongside musican Klein (who wrote the score), and with Lynch and Rogers continuing to work alongside Joseph in the editing room.

Presumably, the extended time frame it took to complete “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” exasperated A24, which had announced a 2024 release date and quietly abandoned the project, leaving Joseph to finish it on his own. When Participant and Joseph parted ways at Sundance, Rich Spirit stepped in to rescue what is one of 2025’s most exciting and boundary-pushing releases.

The release marks the first major project from Rich Spirit, an independent film label dedicated to amplifying voices from the global diaspora. The studio previously co-released Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” with Briarcliff Entertainment, helping rescue the controversial film from financiers who had abandoned the project and turn it into an awards contender.

To make sure you don’t miss Kahlil Joseph’s November 26 interview about “BLKNWS,” subscribe to the Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.