Director

Khalik Allah

Khalik Allah is a New York-based photographer and filmmaker who works after dark, in the streets full of life. The result is a body of work often described as “street opera”, made up of striking, uncompromising portraits of an America that many refuse to see.

After several short films and a few music videos in collaboration with the Wu-Tang Clan, in 2015 Khalik Allah directed the feature film Field Niggas (presented at FIDMarseille, RIDM, CPH:DOX), at the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, in Harlem. At the same location, he took 105 35mm portraits, which are featured in his first book Souls Against the Concrete, published by the University of Texas Press.

Khalik Allah went on to produce Black Mother in 2018, in which he travels across Jamaica, meeting people of all ages, their voices and their faces. Imbued with poetry, the documentary tackles issues of religion, motherhood and identity. Presented at international festivals (Cinéma du réel, Sheffield DOC/FEST), the film is shown in museums and schools.

In 2020, he takes us back to that Harlem street corner with IWOW: I Walk on Water (presented at CPH:DOX and True False FF). Once again, Khalik juggles film and digital, on the stories of these anonymous men and women who become, under his lens, real cinema characters. At the same time, he became a nominated member of Magnum, whose Paris gallery he inaugurated with Bruce Davidson in 2021.