Stamped from the Beginning

Stamped from the Beginning (2023) is an American documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Roger Ross Williams. Drawn from Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award–winning history, the film traces how racist ideas embedded themselves in American institutions — not as fringe beliefs, but as mainstream intellectual and political output across centuries.

Williams pairs inventive animation with testimony from scholars Angela Davis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Brittany Packnett, and others. At 92 minutes, it moves through a huge span of history without losing its argument. The film implicates systems rather than just individuals — deliberately uncomfortable, and harder to dismiss than a simple villain narrative would be. Stream Stamped from the Beginning online on iFILM.