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There’s intimacy. And then there’s claustrophobia. Numa Perrier, the writer-director-co-star of “Jezebel,” delivers both in her nuanced debut feature. The semi-autobiographical story of a young woman finding her way as a “camgirl” in the world-wide-web frontier of the late-’90s adult entertainment biz premiered at last year’s SXSW film fest. It was picked up by Ava Duvernay’s Array Releasing, which aims to support female- and minority-made independent cinema, and which has arranged select arthouse screenings around the country, in addition to making the film available to stream via Netflix.

Newcomer Tiffany Tenille portrays 19-year-old Tiffany, who lives with older sis Sabrina (Perrier), resentful brother Dominic (Stephen Harrington), and a little niece. Also sharing the crowded one-bedroom of a low-budget suites motel is Sabrina’s white boyfriend David (Bobby Field). With his fussy tobacco pipe and faux patriarch grumblings, he enters the room like he owns the joint.

This year’s American Black Film Festival lineup is stacked with some of the top names in Hollywood as well as emerging voices including a screening of Reginald Hudlin’s The Black Godfather, a conversation with Spike Lee and his protege Stefon Bristol as well as the five finalists for HBO Short Film Competition, which is now in its 22nd year. The fest takes place June 12-16 in Miami.

The program will also include the previously announced opening night film Shaft. New Line Cinema’s reboot of the iconic character will screen at the fest ahead of its June 14 release. In addition, Netflix will screen the Chris Robinson-directed Beats, a coming-of-age drama set in Chicago’s South Side hip-hop scene starring Anthony Anderson.

“Beyond the Spider-Verse: What’s Next for Sony Pictures Animation” will be a conversation between Academy Award-winner Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Matthew A. Cherry...

Set in the pre-broadband era of Las Vegas, 1998, Numa Perrier’s Jezebel is a sensitive rather than exploitative look at legal, entry-level sex work that’s realistic without being explicit. A family unit sleep five to a suite in a roadside motel, led by de facto matriarch Sabrina (played by writer-director Perrier). The men in the home–including boyfriend David (Bobby Field), a former phone sex client of hers–barely work, heading down to the strip for cheap beers after pre-gaming at home. Sabrina is the matriarch because she brings in revenue working as a phone sex operator from home, although her pay is not quite enough as the family deals with their ill, off-screen mother. Their mother was largely cared for by Tiffany (Tiffany Tenille), and once their mother has passed, our protagonist is sent off to the job market.

Adapting the persona Jezebel, 19-year-old Tiffany is instructed to...

Filmmaker Numa Perrier calls Jezebel a story of “coming of womanhood…Black Womanhood.” The film, which she wrote and directed, is based on a true story and follows 19-year-old Tiffany (Tiffany Tenille) as she deals with her dying mother and tries to make ends meet by working as an internet fetish cam girl. In the clip above, we see Tiffany come at odds with her boss at her place of work as she encounters a client using the N-word. It’s a taste of what’s to come in Perrier’s feature directorial debut which will make its world premiere at SXSW in Austin March 9.

In the film, Tiffany crashes with five family members in a Las Vegas studio apartment in the last days of her mother’s life. In order to make ends meet, her older sister, a phone sex operator, introduces her to the world of internet fetish cam girls.

Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.