MoMA Contenders 2025: Sinners
Wed 12/10 • 7:30PM PST
Hammer Museum
Presented in 70mm! Followed by a conversation with writer & director Ryan Coogler and actors Delroy Lindo & Wunmi Mosaku
The horror film has never been as accepted as a mainstream storytelling genre, or a more powerful mirror of troubled times, as it is today. Rooted in the intertwined histories of Black cultural achievement and racism in America, Sinners is destined to be regarded as a landmark of the genre. Twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” (Michael B. Jordan, in a remarkable double performance), back from the trenches of WWI, use money stolen from the Chicago mob to purchase a sawmill and open an exclusive juke joint for a Black community in Mississippi. The irresistible energy of the music and dance emanating from within draws a coven of immigrant Irish vampires to the crowded club doors; at first they modestly request entry as fellow entertainers, but soon they are picking off locals before mounting a ferocious, climactic assault. Coogler uses vampirism as a metaphor for the complex history of racial “passing” and assimilation in America is profoundly affecting, as is the film’s inclusion of marginalized Chinese and Native American characters in the film’s horrific—and historically accurate—portrayal of the nation’s culture of prejudice. Not since the late Indigenous Canadian filmmaker Jeff Barnaby used horror to recall the history of abuse suffered by First Nations peoples in Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and Blood Quantum (2019) has a director so provocatively employed the genre to lay bare the monstrous political realities of his place and time. Sinners may be set in 1932, but it calls for serious reflection in 2025.
2025. USA. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. With Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo. 70mm, courtesy Warner Brothers. 137 min.
Learn more here: https://hmmr.buzz/sinners
Tickets
$10 Hammer members | $20 general admission
Current members, check your email for your link to buy tickets, or contact membership@hammer.ucla.edu. Not a member? Become one today for 50% off tickets!