Feature Documentary/2023/USA/91min/Directed by Lisa Cortes, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza

In the 1950s the American astronaut was imagined as “white, male and … 5’10” … but there’s another story, that of African Americans who made a crucial and largely overlooked contribution to space exploration.

The Space Race tells this story, looking at the black test pilots, engineers and astronauts, the battles they fought and the victories that were won.

More than this, the documentary also explores Afrofuturism and space exploration, a world that takes in the jazz of Sun Ra, the literature of Octavia Butler, and Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura (the brilliant Nichelle Nichols), and the sense of possibilities they evoked and the individuals they inspired.