Jordan Peele won big Wednesday night at the African American Film Critics Association Awards.
Peele’s Get Out took home awards for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actor for the film’s star Daniel Kaluuya.
The director also took home the inaugural Richard Wesley Award for Best Screenplay.
“I’m so honored by this award,” he said to the crowd. “The approval of the critics means a lot to me, the approval of African Americans who felt that this was a film that addressed what they needed to hear and spoke to them means everything to me, and the approval of Black critics means a lot of everything to me.”
Peele also took time to reflect on how Black audiences reacted to the film.
“I used to go to the movie theater and watch horror movies and you know Black people, we yell shit at the screen,” Peele said. “I’d go watch like a Freddy movie and you’d hear people saying shit like, ‘Oh, bitch, get out of the house’ or ‘No. no, no–don’t walk backwards!’ or ‘You’re white–call the cops!’ I got it in my head that there was a missing piece of the conversation. There was a film that we were asking for, begging for that wasn’t there for us.”
He adds that Chance the Rapper’s reaction to the film was priceless, “My favorite reaction was, in one of the screenings Chance the Rapper was there. He was there with some of his friends. And, there’s so much tension in the movie, so much stress I put the audience through that by the time he actually starts getting out it’s cathartic.”
“When he gores Bradley Whitford with those antlers Chance and his friends just stood up,” Peele said. “They stood for the rest of the film.”
Other winner’s for the night included Girls Trip for Best Comedy and Tiffany Haddish for Best Supporting Actress.
Accepting the award on Haddish’s behalf, producer Will Packer said, “Thank you so much AAFCA for seeing us. Before it was cool, before it was in vogue before many members of the mainstream press decided that we should honor these folks who are telling these stories, the African American Film Critics Association did it first. Thank you for seeing us.”
