From THT Media Lab. Artificial intelligence is handing the camera to storytellers who never had a studio behind them. A filmmaker in Lagos, Dakar or Chicago can now build a war epic, a family drama or a Yoruba myth from a laptop. Here are ten AI-made films by Black and African creators that show what is already possible.
How we chose: Each film was made with AI tools, according to the creator or a published source, which we link below. Each one tells a Black or African story or comes from a Black or African creator. All rights belong to the filmmakers.
1.Battalion
Dave Clark · USA · 2024
A war film built shot by shot with AI tools such as Kling, Runway, Midjourney and ElevenLabs. Clark, a veteran commercial director, has become one of the most watched AI filmmakers working today.
2.Borrowing Time
Dave Clark · USA · 2024
Inspired by his father’s life in the 1960s, a story about being Black “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Proof that AI can carry family memory.
3.The B Side: The Future Is Past
Kimberly Offord · USA (Chicago) · 2026
Visitors from the sky arrive in a Jim Crow town. Shown in the American Black Film Festival’s 2026 AI x XR showcase. Offord also founded the Black AI Film Festival.
4.Àjákà
Abiodun Odu · Nigeria · 2026
A five-minute Yoruba myth in which every frame was generated with AI, from more than 600 prompts.
5.Mountain of Graves
DragonStudios.ai, written with Phuti Lehong Buka · South Africa · 2025
Brothers fight a mining company over their ancestral burial mountain in a 10-episode vertical series made entirely with AI. A finalist at a Los Angeles festival.
6.Thiaroye 44
Hussein Dembel Sow, with artist Dip Doundou Guiss · Senegal
A tribute to the 1944 massacre of West African soldiers at Thiaroye, made with AI platforms.
7.The Lickback Renaissance
King Willonius Hatcher · USA · 2023–24
A two-part sci-fi noir comedy made with Midjourney, Runway and ChatGPT by one of the best-known Black voices in AI video.
8.Another Day
Saif Eldin Hamza and Omar El Naggar · Sudan and Egypt · 2026
A mother, a daughter and Alzheimer’s. Winner of a special prize at the UN’s AI for Good Film Festival.
9.Lily
Zoubeir Jlassi · Tunisia · 2025
A nine-minute dark fable that won Google’s Global AI Film Award.
10.Mirrored America
Jacqualynn “Jai” Harris · USA · 2025–26
The first episode of a planned six-part series on race, labor and erasure, developed with AI filmmaking tools by a Writers Guild member with BET and OWN credits.
Before AI: Black films that imagined the machine
These films were not made with AI, but they asked the questions first: Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu, Kenya), Neptune Frost (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman), Afro Algorithms (Anatola Araba), Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, They Cloned Tyrone and the documentary Coded Bias, featuring Joy Buolamwini.
Made an AI film? We want to see it.
The Harlem Times is building a YouTube channel for AI films by Black and diaspora creators, with an annual awards program to follow in 2027. We feature films only with the creator’s permission and full credit, and creators keep all rights. Send your title, a watch link, your country and the AI tools you used to pjackson@theharlemtimes.com.
Know a film that belongs on this list? Tell us. We will update it as new work arrives.