‘Elevate Black creatives’: Issa Rae takes on new role at Miami’s American Black Film Festival

It started with a conversation.

Ahead of the American Black Film Festival, Hollywood multi-hyphenate Issa Rae expressed an interest in having a bigger role in preparation for its 2024 iteration. The festival, after all, was one of the first places that supported her. So she asked festival co-founders Nicole and Jeff Friday. The result: a newly minted creative director role.

“We developed this role for her so that she can really be apart of it,” Nicole said. “And it’s not just being apart of it where she’s showing up as talent. She was on meetings. She has great ideas. She’s offering assistance.”

When the 28th annual ABFF returns to Miami Beach June 12-16, that vision – curated by Rae and the Fridays – will come to life. From the Denzel Washington retrospective to replacing the closing gala with a yacht party, Rae’s fingerprints are all over this year’s festival. Her involvement also underscores ABFF’s mission to mine the next generation of Black talent.

“As one of the first major festivals to showcase my work, ABFF continues to elevate Black creatives from the ground up, and I’m excited to join its co-founders and producers, Nicole and Jeff Friday, in that mission,” Rae said in a statement.

Rae’s career started on YouTube with her self-produced series “Diary of An Awkward Black Girl.” The program’s success spawned the HBO show “Insecure,” which earned several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations across its five season run. In 2020, Rae founded HOORAE, a media company that seeks to increase representation in various areas including music, film and television.

In the past, ABFF has had ambassadors. Rae herself served in that capacity in 2022. The creative director position, however, is far more hands-on from the beginning.

“Ambassadors help us bring awareness to the festival ,” Nicole said. “They’re not part of the executive side, if you will. They really come on leading up to the festival and really have a footprint when they’re on the ground in Miami.”

Added Jeff: “The creative director is more of a programming role and the ambassador is more PR and broadening awareness.”

One of the biggest contributions to come out of Rae’s collaboration with ABFF was the Washington retrospective. Described by Jeff as “a journey through his career,” the June 15 event will utilize videos and pictures to accent an in-person conversation with Washington.

“If you don’t know who Denzel Washington is, if you don’t know all the details, we’re going to take you from the beginning to through his career,” Jeff said.

The choice of Washington, Jeff continued, was obvious.

“He’s the GOAT,” Jeff added. “He’s an icon. He’s one of the most successful actors of all time. And he’s a friend of the festival so we couldn’t think of any better person to kick off this series.”

Both Washington’s return and Rae’s new role represent an important feature of the festival: sending the elevator back down. Since its inception in 1997, ABFF has helped launch the careers of several notable filmmakers and actors including Ryan Coogler, Kerry Washington and Will Packer in part due to the visibility and informative panel sessions. This year’s festival provides those looking for their big break a little bit of everything: networking opportunities, panel discussions about Atlanta’s robust film market and world premiere screenings for movies like “The Waterboyz,” documentaries like “Train: The Dick ‘Night Train’ Lane Story” and television series like “Unsolicited.”

“There’s nothing else like this for Black filmmakers,” Jeff said.

Rae actually debuted her critically acclaimed series “Insecure” at ABFF in 2016. Six years later, after the show came to a close, the Los Angeles native returned in 2022 to premiere “RAP SH!T,” for which she served as an executive producer through her media company HOORAE. Similarly, Kerry attended the festival in 2001 to promote “LIFT,” her first leading role in a feature film. She once again returns this year when she will premiere the second season of her Hulu show entitled “UnPrisoned” on June 13. The cyclical nature of the festival – from unknown actor to established star to mentor – also happens to be Jeff’s favorite part.

“Our whole platform is to create success stories and encourage those success stories to give back,” Jeff said. “That’s at the core of why we do what we do.”

IF YOU GO:

WHAT: American Black Film Festival

WHEN: June 12-16

WHERE: Miami Beach/ Overtown

TICKETS: Start at $50

Visit https://www.abff.com/miami/ for more information