Long before zombies were shuffling through The Walking Dead or The Last of Us, the figure meant something entirely different. Kino Lorber has released the official trailer for Black Zombie, the debut feature documentary from Afro-Caribbean-Canadian filmmaker Maya Annik Bedward, opening September 11 at the Quad Cinema in New York and the Nuart in Los Angeles before expanding to select theaters nationwide.
The film digs beneath the blood-soaked spectacle of modern horror to uncover the zombie’s buried and deeply unsettling origins. Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery, not a monster but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol of stolen agency was recast as an object of fear, while Black spiritual traditions were distorted, sensationalized and erased. Bedward traces the evolution of the zombie from colonial Haiti to contemporary Hollywood, reconsidering iconic films like White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead and The Serpent and the Rainbow alongside archival footage, vérité scenes and interviews with cultural historians, artists and genre legends.
“In Haiti, everyone talks about zombies,” one voice says in the trailer. “But it’s not like what they show on TV. Turning someone into a zombie is like putting them back into slavery.” Another interviewee adds: “It makes so much sense that the idea of a zombie would come from a tradition of a people who are enslaved.”
The film features interviews with Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, Tananarive Due, Zandashé Brown, Tom Savini, who created the zombie makeup for George Romero’s landmark films, and executive producer Slash, who offers his own take on what makes zombies so enduringly terrifying. “You could run as fast as you wanted,” Slash says in the trailer. “They would always get you.”
Black Zombie premiered at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival and has since screened at Hot Docs, Fantasia International Film Festival, Chicago Critics and the Black Star Film Festival among others. The film is directed and written by Bedward and produced by Bedward, Kate Fraser and Hannah Donegan. Executive producers include Jennifer Holness, Michael Paszt, Andrew Thomas Hunt, James Fler and Slash.
Black Zombie opens September 11 at the Quad Cinema in New York and the Nuart in Los Angeles, expanding to select theaters nationwide.