To keep with the theme of “Homecoming” for the 30th anniversary edition of the American Black Film Festival, organizers Jeff and Nicole Friday tapped a familiar face to kick off its opening night.
“I remember when we screened ‘Girls Trip,’ it went over like gangbusters,” said director Malcolm D. Lee over Zoom, recalling his first film that opened ABFF nearly a decade ago, and went on to be a global comedy phenomenon. Now, his new project “Strung,” which comes to Peacock in June, marks his grand return, but “it’ll be a different type of reaction. It’s a different movie.”
“When we consider films for the festival’s opening night as well as closing night or centerpiece, it always starts with a good story, our relationship with the studio and certainly the director. Malcolm D. Lee is a friend of the festival, and has been coming for, I don’t even know how many years at this point,” said Nicole Friday of the decision to program “Strung,” starring Chloe Bailey, as the festival opener. “He’s a dear friend and anytime we’ve asked him to do anything, literally he’s done everything with us from screening his content, films, panels, mentoring with the filmmakers, just so many things, just hanging out with his wife so many things.” She adds, “[We] love his point of view and his ability of storytelling. So always happy to showcase anything that he does.”
“Strung,” as Lee implied, is a departure from the type of films “The Best Man” director is best known for. “I’m not a horror guy. I think of this more as a psychological thriller, and I love those types of movies. I never had a chance to do it, and so here was a great opportunity to exercise a different muscle and see what I can do with this genre, and I’m very happy with the results,” he said. “It’s a good crowd pleaser. There’s going to be lots of murmurs and gasps and talking at the screen.”
Produced by both Tyler Perry and Jason Blum, “Strung” sees Bailey play a skilled violinist hired by a wealthy family to tutor their traumatized young daughter, as both parties are increasingly haunted by their pasts. After the pair of moguls had developed the script written by Alan McElroy, originally titled “Help,” Lee and his producing partner Dominique Telson were hired to make it their own, with minimal intervention during the production process.
“Producers are smart enough to know when they’ve got a filmmaker who knows what they’re doing and has a team who knows what they’re doing. And so it’s like, ‘Oh, ok. He’s got a vision. Go do it,’” said Lee of working with Perry and Blum. “Even in the editorial process, it was like, ‘Hey, try this, try that.’ And because they’ve had experience doing these movies, I was like, ‘Ok, well, let me try that.’ But at the end of the day, you’ve got to trust your instincts. You certainly take in their wealth of experience in this genre and say, ‘Ok, all right, I’ve never done this thing before,’ but yet still you’ve got to say to yourself, ‘All right, that’s an interesting idea, but I’m going to try it this way.’”
However, “To their credit, they say, ‘The audience always wins.’ And I agree, the audience always wins. If the audience is responding well, great. You keep it,” said the director. “If they don’t, then you have to change. You can’t force them to see your vision. You have to make it apparent to them.”
“Obviously, the combination of Jason Blum and Tyler Perry, they’ve garnered audiences for their entire careers, and so it’s a great combination to bring those two audiences together,” said Lee. “In making this movie, I looked at some of the classics, some of the Hitchcock movies, and ‘Fatal Attraction’ and a lot of the Blumhouse pictures as well, just to see, ‘Ok, what does a Blumhouse audience expect and how do I bring what I do to that genre?’”
Again, Lee resists calling a “Strung” a horror movie just as he generally resists being boxed into one genre. “I don’t consider myself a comedy director, I consider myself a director. And I like being able to tell stories and explore different genres, stretch my legs and work with different techniques and framings and camera movement and things like that. So it was rewarding to do a movie like this.”
Opening ABFF 2026 with a film like “Strung,” which sees Lee expanding his horizons in terms of how he is perceived as a filmmaker is representative of what Friday says the festival is all about. “It’s really been that platform, that springboard for those who are just getting started, whether you’re an emerging artist or those who are already in the industry but want to use the platform to showcase their work and to just garner community and energy around whatever content it is or project it is that they have,” said the president and co-founder of Nice Crowd, the company that produces the festival.
“It’s not just for those who want to be in front of the camera. You have emerging and aspiring executives who want to be in the room or have a seat at the table. It’s also a platform for that,” she said. “It’s a huge networking opportunity for anyone who is interested in this space or even if you are just a cinephile and just love consuming content, and you want to see what the indie filmmakers are doing. If you want to watch any of those, we have some really, really good films.”
The 2026 narrative feature competition includes films starring Emmy winner Courtney B. Vance, “The Wire” alum Tristan “Mack” Wilds, and even Grammy winner Coco Jones, who also appears in “Strung.” There is also the Oscar-qualifying HBO Short Film Award showcase, which boasts recent Oscar winner Ryan Coogler as an alum.
On the subject of festival’s pasts, and the idea that Lee tried his hands at making a thriller in the absence of demand for more comedies, the filmmaker says “sometimes there’s just not good ones out there,” and “Sometimes they’re good ones that people just don’t end up going to see. So I don’t worry too much about it, but it is increasingly difficult, but that’s why you have to make sure that the script is so good, and that you cast it right because, ‘Well, if this doesn’t work, then comedy’s dead.’ Comedy was dead before ‘Girls Trip’ supposedly.”
And yet, after the film opened ABFF 2017, “We made that movie and the rest is history. People really, really took to it.” Despite the genre change, Lee anticipates a similar response to “Strung” at this special anniversary year of ABFF. “This is the kind of movie that you want to see with a crowd,” says the director. “It’ll be a great way to kick it off because it’s got a lot of twists and turns and things that people aren’t going to see coming, and it’s very cinematic. So we are very much anticipating a great screening.”
“Strung” premieres at the 2026 American Black Film Festival, and will begin streaming on Peacock on June 26, 2026.
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