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The Apollo (2019)

Name: The Apollo
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2019-04-24
Duration: 101 min
Rating: 6.4
Cast: Pharrell Williams, Jamie Foxx, Patti LaBelle, Smokey Robinson, Angela Bassett

The Apollo (2019), directed by Roger Ross Williams, starring Pharrell Williams and Jamie Foxx.

04/24/2019 BR Documentary 1h 41m

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Quiz about this movie

The soul of the American culture.

Synopsis

The history of New York City's Apollo Theater in Harlem is given the full treatment.

Michael DwyerCinematography
Roger Ross WilliamsDirector, Writer
錢孝貞Editing
Cassidy HartmannProducer, Writer

About the film

The Apollo is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Roger Ross Williams. The Apollo had its world premiere on April 24, 2019, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It received positive reviews and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special in 2020 while also being shortlisted for nomination of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

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Summary

The film looks at the unique history and contemporary legacy of the iconic Apollo Theater while following the Apollo's inaugural staging of Ta-Nehisi Coates' acclaimed "Between the World and Me."

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 22 critics and assessed 21 as positive and 1 as negative for a 95% rating. Metacritic determined an average rating of 7.7/10.

Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly scored The Apollo an A−, writing "Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams stacks his story accordingly, drawing warm testimonials from some of the biggest names to ever grace its stage, including Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Jamie Foxx, and Pharrell Williams. But the [film] also works beautifully as a mosaic, unfurling its rich history without failing to acknowledge that it takes more than nostalgia to keep a cultural institution alive. In that sense, The Apollo feels like both a necessary lesson and a gift."

Accolades

References

External links

The Apollo at IMDb

Text from The Apollo (2019 film) on Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_(2019_film)

Trivia

It premiered on April 24, 2019, a Wednesday.
It runs 1h41 — a typical feature length.
As of September 20, 2026, it is available in Brazil by subscription on HBO Max.
This film's quiz has 10 questions — enough to play more than once without repeats.

Production

StudiosBert Marcus Productions, Chicago Media Project, White Horse Pictures, HBO, HBO Documentary Films, Impact Partners, MACRO
CountriesUnited States
LanguagesEnglish
StatusReleased