Diary of an African Nun
Based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker, Julie Dash’s (b. 1952) student film, made while attending UCLA’s MFA program during the groundbreaking L.A. Rebellion period—which saw a massive surge in films made by Black students at the university—explores the interior, spiritual life of a young Black nun in Uganda as she interrogates her devotion to Catholicism.

Hester Street
Set in the Jewish community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1896, Joan Micklin Silver’s (1935–2020) debut feature is told through Eastern European immigrant Gitl (Carol Kane) as she grapples with maintaining her personal agency within the traditions of her Jewish faith. For Silver, a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Hester Street was a personal story, which she adapted herself from Abraham Cahan’s novella Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto. A universal narrative about acceptance and identity, Hester Street garnered Kane an Oscar nomination for her performance, and the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2011.