Within Our Gates

★★★★★

Turkish title: Kapıların Ardında

“Not Merely a Common Moving Picture - A Screen Masterpiece”

1920 · 1 h 19 min

Directed by Oscar Micheaux

DramaRomance

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Cast

Evelyn Preer

Credits

Written by: Oscar Micheaux

Plot

Sylvia Landry, a young Black schoolteacher, travels north to Boston to raise funds for a school for Black children in the South. Her struggle is intercut with a flashback to her own past, which includes a lynching and an attempted assault. Oscar Micheaux's 1920 film was a direct reply to D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and is the earliest surviving feature film by an African American director. Censors in Chicago tried to stop its release because of its violence, and the film is an important record of Black independent cinema.

Sinekatalog’s take

Oscar Micheaux's surviving 1920 silent film follows a Black schoolteacher raising funds for a Southern school, with a harrowing lynching flashback. Rough but bold, it is a landmark of early Black cinema and a direct answer to Birth of a Nation.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 6.4 / 10 (4,150 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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