‘Get Out’ Stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield Star in Biographical Drama Film ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

Daniel Kaluuya stars as Black Panther Party activist Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah, to be released in theaters in 2021.

The film tells the true story of Chicago-born, charismatic political activist Hampton, who rose to prominence as the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party during the 1960s. Hampton achieved regional and national influence for his effective social campaigns against racism but was assassinated at the age of 21 by FBI informant William O’Neal, played by LaKeith Stanfield. O’Neal became part of Hampton’s inner circle after he made a deal with FBI Agent Roy Mitchell, played by Jesse Plemons. O’Neal infiltration of the Black Panther Party resulted in the J. Edgar Hoover counter-intelligence program raid that killed Hampton.

The official trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah was released on August 6. The film was initially scheduled to be released in theaters on August 21, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the release has been postponed to 2021, with no official date set.

The film is quite pertinent, especially with the recent surge in Black Lives Matter support. Stanfield recently posted to his Instagram a video in which he talks about the importance of self-love during this time of racial violence and unrest.

“Every time I scroll on the news… I see another black person dead, at the hands of this gun violence and all this gang [stuff],” said Stanfield. “It just makes me think about the source of where all this comes from. Because nobody just wakes up – white, black, blue, or purple – and just be like ‘I want to destroy and harm [stuff].’ That [stuff] comes from a deep-seated, misunderstanding fundamentally of what and who you are.”

He acknowledges that self-love isn’t easy and that he’s still working on loving himself. He stresses that no one else can do the work to get you to love yourself; you have to work on it yourself.

“I know self-love ain’t nothing easy because I’ve been trying to figure it out for myself,” said Stanfield. “Every day [I am] still trying to learn to love myself based on the lies that I was told when I was young.  How when you get abused, or slapped around, or misused, or pushed into ever smaller categories, you start to believe the [lies] people told you. We got to do the work. We got to try to do the steps to love ourselves because ain’t nobody else is going to do that for us.”

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