Love, Brooklyn

Rachael Abigail Holder grew up on Long Island, the daughter of Guyanese immigrants, and as a girl she went to Brooklyn every Sunday for church with other West Indian families. She lived there later, while studying dramatic writing at NYU. After directing episodes of shows like 'Dickinson', she makes her feature debut with 'Love, Brooklyn', a love triangle that's also a portrait of a neighbourhood changing too fast. Paul Zimmerman wrote the script, drawing on relationships he had when he was young.

Roger is a writer, and he's late with a piece on Brooklyn's "evolution", commissioned now that the city is coming out of lockdown. The trouble is he doesn't believe a word of it: as far as he's concerned, the borough is going backwards. He cycles round Fort Greene and Bedford Stuyvesant and spends his evenings with Casey, his ex and best friend. She runs an art gallery her grandmother left her, and some buyers want it, along with the rest of the block.

Late at night Roger bikes over to Nicole's. She's a widow training as a massage therapist, and what they have doesn't come with a label. Her nine year old daughter, Ally, keeps wanting more of him, which makes things harder. His best friend Alan, married and bored, lives through Roger's love life and tells him "all of the above" isn't an answer. Stuck between going back to what he knows and trying something new, Roger is running out of excuses.

André Holland, who starred in 'Moonlight', plays Roger and produced the film too. It took six years to get made, with the pandemic in the way. When the financing was still a chunk short, Steven Soderbergh, who'd directed him in 'The Knick' and 'High Flying Bird', came in as executive producer. Holland reunites with Nicole Beharie, who played opposite him in '42', while DeWanda Wise, who knows Brooklyn from Spike Lee's 'She's Gotta Have It', plays Nicole and Roy Wood Jr. is Alan. Holder shot it seven months pregnant.

It premiered at Sundance in January 2025 and opened in American cinemas on 29 August. British audiences caught it at the London Film Festival that October. Critics were taken with the trio and the way it lights Brooklyn's streets, but plenty found the script thin. In February 2026 it won the NAACP Image Award for best independent film.

• Romance
• Drama
• Comedy