For years, Kahlil Joseph has been the most innovative and important non-feature filmmaker – a title that will officially be retired when his highly acclaimed “BLKNWS: General Terms and Conditions” opens in theaters in 12 cities on November 28, 2025. That’s right, films distributor, Rich Spirit, is announcing today – in a move that would make the film’s former distributor A24 blush — it will open the film, which remixes Black History and culture, on Black Friday.
Rich Spirit’s press release makes it clear that, like “BLKNWS” itself, releasing the film on the biggest shopping day of the year is both playful and deadly serious.
“The date connects the film’s release to global conversations about media, capitalism and the black archive amid renewed conversations about erasure, representation and the restoration of civil rights,” according to the official Rich Spirit press release. “BLKNWS on BLKFRDY comes to theaters as both a cinematic and cultural event for audiences in targeted markets, aiming to transform 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 United States, Canada and Europe”, and include Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington DC, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Toronto, London and Paris.
After first being pulled from Sundance 2025 lineup of the film’s original backers Participants — just to be rescheduled at the last minute to have an unceremonious premiere at a screening at 9 — “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” has continued to be well-received 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. Besides winning glowing reviews (100 on Rotten Tomatoes, 87 on MetaCritic) and ardent admirers, Joseph’s feature debut won the FIPRESCI Award at the 2025 Viennale and shared the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the Documentary Competition at the Montclair Film Festival.
In late November, the film will be released in full contention to make the Academy’s Best Documentary shortlist — IndieWire has confirmed that Rich Spirit will target nonfiction awards with the innovative film that features a fictional Afrofuturist narrative.
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 visuals in his collaborations with the world’s most prominent musicians, and finding full expression in short-form projects such as 2013’s ‘Until the Quiet Comes’, for the Musician Flying the Short Film Prize at the Sundry Film Festival; the 15-minute film about Compton in “good kid, mAAd city” for Kendrick Lamar; as well as being the original visionary behind Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.”
Joseph has never been interested in linear narratives, he has thought of his work as more akin to how a musician approaches an album. Inspired by filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Terrence Malick (with whom Joseph worked early in his career), Joseph prefers to use sound and music to evoke lyricism and complexity rather than relying on a traditional narrative. Following in the footsteps of one of his idols and mentors (and “BLKNWS” contributor) Arthur Jafa, the acclaimed music video director gravitated more toward the art world than Hollywood, while also serving as creative director of the 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, originally dreamed up by Joseph and Ryan Coogler as an antidote to cable news during President Trump’s 2015 campaign. It was envisioned as a continuous, curated broadcast, weaving news and clips from social media and cultural artifacts into a dynamic stream intended to reflect the richness of black life.
On an upcoming episode of Filmmaker Toolkit podcastJoseph explained how “BLKNWS” made him increasingly watch YouTube in his spare time.
“I assumed that if I (watched YouTube over TV) so did everyone else. And I also understood that people were excited to learn in a way that I don’t think the entertainment industry takes into account,” Joseph said on the podcast. “People want to learn things, that’s what makes YouTube so exciting. You can learn about anything, as much as you can watch music videos and content creators, mostly people are sharing knowledge and information, not just opinions.”
Joseph hired editors Luke Lynch and Paul Rogers (“Everything Everywhere at Once”)and together they began downloading YouTube clips and cutting them together as they experimented with finding the turntable-like remix language for the cinematic news experience. Early versions were showcased at the 2019 Venice Biennale and 2020 Sundance Film Festival, as Joseph saw “BLKNWS” more as a platform and media company with the potential to reach beyond the art installation world. While on the podcast, Joseph admitted that he considered accepting venture capital investment offers to expand the media company, but when the pandemic hit, he first decided on an intermediate step, accepts A24’s offer to make it into a feature film.
While on the podcast, Joseph discussed the long and unorthodox process of turning his project into a feature film, which included bringing artists, journalists and thinkers on board, including Jafa, Bradford Young, Onye Anyanwu, Saidiya Hartman, Kaneza Schaal, Garrett Bradley, Raven Jackson, Jomo Fray, Dionne Brand, Christina Adele Hunn, Kristen Adele Hunn, Kristen Adele Hunt, Kristen Fatunde, along with musician Klein (who wrote the score), and with Lynch and Rogers continuing to work together with Joseph in the editing room.
Presumably, the extended time frame it took to complete “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” annoyed A24, who 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 save 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 company dedicated to amplifying voices from the global diaspora. The studio previously released Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” with Briarcliff Entertainment, helping rescue the controversial film from financiers who had abandoned the project and turned it into an awards contender.
To make sure you don’t miss Kahlil Joseph’s Nov. 26 interview on “BLKNWS,” subscribe to the Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
