Black Women’s Stories Are the Hardest to Get Made: The Gina Prince-Bythewood Interview

It’s been 20 years since New Line Cinema released Gina Prince-Bythewood’s feature directorial debut, “Love & Basketball,” and the writer-director said that film — now a classic, especially among African American audiences — allowed her a kind of freedom she hasn’t seen since.

Produced by Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and Mule Filmworks, the film starred Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan as Quincy McCall and Monica Wright, childhood friends who fall in love as adults and share another all-consuming passion: basketball. Told largely from Monica’s perspective, this career-versus-love story continues to resonate.

“I have never had the kind of freedom I had on ‘Love and Basketball,‘” she said in a candid and long-ranging interview with IndieWire. Since then, she’s made just three films, including HBO’s Terry McMillan adaptation “Disappearing Acts” (2000);  “The Secret Life of Bees” (2008) for Fox Searchlight; and Relativity Media’s “Beyond the Lights” (2014), starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker.