10 movies you can watch in honor of Juneteenth 2025

Juneteenth isn’t just a date on the calendar, it’s a celebration of Black legacy and the years of struggle they have endured with strength, only to come out as a brave, bold and beautiful community that holds tight to the roots of American freedom. It's a day of justice and celebration, in 1865 when the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States was set in stone. It is a day for us to remember, cherish, respect and commemorate the struggle and joy that bloomed despite it.

Cinema, when done right, doesn’t just entertain, it teaches, holds space, and tells the stories some history books skipped. It gives faces to movements, voices to silence, and feelings to facts. And on Juneteenth, what better way to honor Black legacy, love, pain, and triumph than to sit with those stories?

This isn’t just a movie list. It’s a journey. Through fields and front porches, riots and revolutions, music halls and courthouses. From the brotherhood showed by the community, to the celebration of their culture. Each film is a chapter that reflects on these stories. Stories of resistance, grace, and unshakable pride.

So here are 10 films to watch on Juneteenth. Some will leave you speechless. Some will fill you with fire. All of them will move you.

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Miss Juneteenth (2020)

Miss Juneteenth should be the first film on your watch list to celebrate this historic day. The film is soaked in the spirit of Juneteenth, not in speeches or textbooks, but in the textures of everyday life. The pageant at its heart isn’t just about crowns and choreography, it’s about honoring the promise of freedom by handing the next generation a shot at something more.

Juneteenth is about delayed liberation, and in a way, so is Turquoise’s story. She’s a woman who had to put her dreams on hold, who sees the pageant as a golden ticket her daughter must grab. But Kai wants her own kind of freedom, the kind that lets her move to her own rhythm, not her mother’s faded pageant walk.

It reminds us that Juneteenth isn’t just about being free, it’s about all the things that we can become once we are.

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Civil: Ben Crump (2022)

Civil: Ben Crump is more than a legal documentary, it’s a portrait of purpose. Directed by Nadia Hallgren, the film follows Crump, often called “Black America’s attorney general,” through a year of deep loss and louder resistance. He fights for justice in the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, not just in courtrooms, but across a nation begging to be heard.

Beyond the legal battles, we see the man, father, advocate, relentless dreamer, shouldering the emotional weight of a country’s grief. Heartfelt and urgent, the film reminds us that justice isn’t just won in court, it’s carried in every step toward change.

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The Color Purple (2023)

The Color Purple is less of a film and more of a gospel-soaked sunrise after a long night. Blitz Bazawule reimagines Alice Walker’s classic with rhythm in its bones and hope in every frame. Fantasia Barrino is stellar as Celie, her voice holding strength with both pain and power. Taraji P. Henson portrays Shug beautifully, while Danielle Brooks is striking as Sofia.

Each gospel note, each dance, each tear-soaked smile is a celebration of survival and softness. This isn’t just a film. It’s a hand reaching back through time saying, “You are seen. You are worthy.” It doesn’t just shine. It sings.

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Sinners (2025)

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a smoky, spellbinding tale that dances between the living and the haunted. Set in 1930s Mississippi, it follows twin brothers, both played by Michael B. Jordan, who open a Black-owned juke joint, dreaming of joy and safety in a world that offers neither. But their safe haven is soon threatened by bloodthirsty forces, both supernatural and systemic.

What makes Sinners perfect for Juneteenth 2025 isn’t just its brilliance, it’s its soul. It’s a film about freedom being fought for, not given. About music, memory, and the monsters we name. For Juneteenth 2025, AMC is bringing it to theaters for $5, reminding us that resistance can look like celebration, and healing can sound like blues.

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I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

I Am Not Your Negro doesn’t just speak, it sears. Directed by Raoul Peck and stitched together from the ashes of James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, it feels like a ghost walking through America with a pen in one hand and fire in the other. Samuel L. Jackson lends his voice to Baldwin’s aching clarity, as the film drifts between past and present, pain and resistance, memory and mirror.

For Juneteenth 2025, it’s not just timely, it’s soul work. It is a brilliant representation of how freedom isn't a flag, it's a fight. Watching it feels like lighting a candle and a fuse all at once. It's liberation through language.

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Selma (2014)

Watching Selma feels like pulling up a chair next to the people who actually lived through the history that we learn, read and hear about today. Ava DuVernay and how she created Dr. King on a podium is nothing short of a spectacular portrayal. She shows us the nerves before the speech, the weight behind every decision, the quiet moments when he’s just a man trying to hold it all together. It’s raw. It’s intimate. It breathes.

That’s what makes it so right for Juneteenth. It doesn’t treat freedom like a box we checked. It reminds us that it was fought for, with aching feet and unwavering hope, and that the fight still hums under our skin.

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Loving (2016)

Loving is one of those films that doesn’t shout, it just looks you in the eye and breaks your heart a little. It follows Mildred and Richard Loving, a real-life couple who just wanted to be married and left alone in 1960s Virginia. Instead, they ended up changing the law for everyone. The way Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton play it? Gentle, tender, and so quietly powerful.

And that’s what makes it perfect for Juneteenth. It shows the quiet struggles faced by those who just wanted to live and breathe in love. It's all parts of heartbreaking and happy at the same time as you find yourself celebrating their union and their quiet achievement.

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12 Years A Slave (2013)

12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, but that’s the point. The film is directed by Steve McQueen, and tells the real story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance is devastating and cruelly spectacular. Every scene feels heavy, honest, and haunting in the best way.

For Juneteenth, this film hits deep. It doesn’t sugarcoat the past, it forces you to sit with it. It reminds us that freedom wasn’t some gentle hand over. It was stolen, reclaimed, and fought for with everything people had. It’s painful, yes. But necessary. And unforgettable.

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Emancipation (2022)

Emancipation grabs you by the throat with all it's brutal honesty and you won't feel the same after witnessing it. Will Smith plays Peter, an enslaved man who escapes through swamps and blood and unthinkable cruelty, just to taste what freedom might feel like. Antoine Fuqua doesn’t flinch with the direction, it’s raw, relentless, and honestly hard to look away from. And it’s based on a real man, the one in that haunting photo with the whip scars that shook the world.

Watching this on Juneteenth will hit different. It reminds you that freedom didn’t arrive gently, it was clawed, bled, and burned into existence. And some people ran for it like their souls depended on it. Because it did.

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The Black Panther franchise

The Black Panther franchise isn’t just a superhero saga, it’s a cultural reset. Directed first by Ryan Coogler, the films gave us Wakanda: a vision of Black excellence, innovation, and power untouched by colonization. Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa was more than a king, he was a symbol. And when Wakanda Forever came, it didn’t just continue the story, it mourned and celebrated him with raw, collective love.

For Juneteenth, Black Panther is joy, pride, and resistance wrapped in vibranium. It shows us what Black freedom and imagination look like when they’re unbound. It’s not just Marvel, it’s a movement. Forever.