Elizaul Santana’s journey from Salem, Massachusetts, to the streets of Hollywood is fueled by grit, grind, and an unbreakable passion for acting, drawing inspiration from legends like Jharrel Jerome, Denzel Washington, Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Scorsese, Ryan Coogler, and Jordan Peele.
“Unstoppable” (Prime Video) is an empowering family film that will pull at your heartstrings. It’s inspired by the true story of Anthony Robles, who was born with one leg and became the NCAA wrestling champion in 2011.
Boots Riley’s brilliance shines through in the sensational and thought-provoking series, “I’m a Virgo.” At the heart of the story is the extraordinary, 13-foot-tall Cootie, portrayed with perfection by Jharrel Jerome, renowned for his Emmy-winning performance in “When They See Us.”
TAYARISHA POE: I made an overture to “Selah and the Spades,” called “Overture,” in 2014, knowing I eventually wanted to make a feature. But I didn’t know how to write a feature script, and I didn’t know what it would be about, so I wrote short stories about the characters and their world — one every day for the month of November 2014. At the end of the month, I had all these stories. Since I knew how to write and take photos, I turned the stories into separate multimedia works. It’s not the most conventional approach to making a movie but it worked for the story because I wound up spending so much time world-building and thinking about the lives of these kids, which in the end made the feature itself so much more complex and rich.
Writer-director Tayarisha Poe’s “Selah and the Spades,” currently playing on
Amazon Prime—immerses us in the world of Selah (“Sell-uh” ) Summers
(Lovie Simone), the shrewd and charming senior head of the Spades and one
of five underground factions that absolutely dominate social life at a
prestigious boarding school.
“When They See Us” wins four AAFCA TV Honors, including Best Limited Series, Best Writing, Breakthrough Performance & Best Ensemble