Hood Cinema

A young street hustler attempts to escape the rigors and temptations of the ghetto in a quest for a better life.

Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects.

Under guidance from experienced thief Will, rookie burglar Shawn navigates relationships with girlfriend Mo'Nique, bumbling friends Birdie and Johnny, parole officer, and volatile neighborhood sociopath Stu while committing robberies.

Two young friends involved in organized crime and drug dealing find that their priorities differ.

As four friends prepare for life after high school, different challenges bring about turning points in each of their lives. The dramas unfold and resolve at their local rollerskating rink, Cascade.

A woman must contend with rival strippers and her boss in an attempt to make a legitimate living.

A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from a life of crime to pursue his passion of rap music.

A crime lord ascends to power and becomes megalomaniacal while a maverick police detective vows to stop him.

A former gangster fresh out of prison wants to change his life for the better and must save his 10 year old son who has already chosen a gang life.

A young man lives and learns while growing up on the street and in and out of correctional facilities.

People from all different walks of life, encounter racial tension, rape, responsibility, and the meaning of an education on a university campus.

Grieving hairdresser Justice goes on a road trip from South Central L.A. to Oakland on a mail truck alongside her friend and an obnoxious postal worker.

Four inner-city teenagers get caught up in the pursuit of power and happiness, which they refer to as "the juice".

A drug dealer tries to get out of the life and start anew with his girlfriend, but the transition is tragically difficult.

It's Friday, and Craig and Smokey must come up with $200 they owe a local bully or there won't be a Saturday.

A streetwise man flees South Central Los Angeles, heading to the suburbs and his lottery-winner uncle and cousin, to avoid a neighborhood thug with a grudge who has just escaped from prison.

Working as security guards, Craig and Day-Day run into the thief who stole their Christmas presents.

A young man from Harlem, forced to cope with the 1980s drug scene, builds an illegal empire, only to have a crisis of conscience.

The Baltimore drug scene, as seen through the eyes of drug dealers and law enforcement.

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

Two basketball hustlers, black Sidney Deane and white Billy Hoyle, join forces to double their chances of winning money on the street courts as well as in a tournament.

In South Central L.A., a misguided 20-year-old African-American man, a "baby boy", faces the commitments of real life.

A basketball player's father must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter sentence.

The life and death story of The Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace), who came straight out of Brooklyn to take the world of rap music by storm.

The rap group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in the mid-1980s and revolutionizes hip-hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.