2020 has been a big year for Kemp Powers, the playwright behind two of the year’s most anticipated films. The first,
One Night in Miami, is based on his 2013 play of the same name and tells the story of a fictional meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a Miami hotel room in 1964. The second is
Soul,
Pixar’s chronicle of a soul finding its back to Earth from the afterlife, which though it’s for a vastly different audience shares a few similarities with
One Night, including questions about legacy and remembrance. Both are also, to varying degrees, Black films.