What is Possible When We Are Able To Tell "Our" Stories

You something so true and beautiful about this movie. I agree with you. It was sooooooooooo beautiful, I can't even begin to explain how.
I really loved how he told the story. This is a love story that showed that love can sustain even through an incredible amount of pain. Just beautiful and magnificent.
Now I just want to read the book of the same title by James Baldwin

From the interviews and speeches that I’ve seen from Regina King...not a fan at all.

I have no effin' clue what the hell you're talking about with this 'black experience' as a black person. I would love the perspective of the 'pains and anxieties' that black people cause to black people who don't act like them. THAT is something I identify with. I do also know this movie sucked.

(I need to check this site more often. I just knew there would be a stupid reply that needed addressing). This movie was an honest examination of easily manipulated saps who praise every SJW-friendly movie that whiiiines and moooans about pooooor black people and even their great-great-great-great offspring are still suffering and always will.

Interesting message. I'd like to know more about your point of view.
Haven’t' seen the film yet myself, but plan on doing so soon, based on the numerous good reviews and my appreciation of some portions of Barry Jenkin's previous film 'Moonlight'

"…don't tell me it doesn't matter, you wouldn't want a Frenchman or Irishman to be the director of stories that are about the American experience".
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I'm not quite sure I understand why I should care about the nationality of the writer/director.
I can think of many quintessential pictures about America that were directed by foreigners (e.g. Chinatown, Once Upon a Time in America, The Great Gatsby, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the American films of Alfred Hitchcock, the American films of Elia Kazan…).

Also, making a movie is notoriously a collaborative effort: what of the nationality (or ethnicity, religion, etc.) of the main actors, the director of photography, set designer, costume designer, editor, score composer, etc.?
Would they also need to have had similar life-experiences as the protagonist the film they’re all working on is about? Would that requirement be different if we were talking about a documentary, or a work of fiction (based on real events/characters or not)?
Would you say there is such a thing as a "single black experience" that all black people share in the US? Or that there is a single "American experience" that all citizens of that country experience?

For example, Stephan James, the actor playing Alonzo in ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ was apparently never incarcerated, and is not even American (he’s Canadian).

(Continued…)

(...continued)

"It's not that there aren't great white/latino/asian directors/writers out there, but they can only go so far in understanding the pain/anxieties of the black community, which is needed to tell a story like this."
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Would you still think the same if said great white/latino/asian director or writer had carried-out proper and thorough research on the topic (including researching history, interviewing members of the black community, etc.)?

Do you find it not reasonable to say that the lived experience of a single person (no matter how intense and tragic and real and true) still cannot be representative of the diversity of experience of the people from that same community or ethnicity or group, and that therefore lived experience is no substitute for sociological/anthropological/historical research and data (at least when it comes to represent or get at some of the truth of what the life of a group of people is/was like)?

Also, if one necessarily needs to have experienced the pain/anxieties of the subject one is set to direct a film about, then what of directors wanting to make a film about things such as, say, rape, loss of a child, schizophrenia, nazi death camps, adultery, suicide, the 9/11 attacks, etc.?
Could they only hope to get at some of the truth of these subjects if they had previously experienced them themselves (or inflicted them on others)? And if that were the case, of the numerous people who have indeed experienced these things (and are still alive and capable of testifying about them), which ones would you say would be the best qualified to write and/or direct a film about them (in other words, what qualities do you think are necessary to write/direct a goof film, once race and nationality have been set aside)?