Christopher Adams, a Chicago native and founder of Impakt Studio, combines self-reliance with creativity in film and animation. His versatile works include Grammy-nominated music videos and documentaries. Influenced by his father’s ingenuity, Adams emphasizes care in storytelling, aiming to rewrite narratives about Chicago’s Black community while fostering an independent film ecosystem.

The story of Yasuke, the African samurai, has become a global Rorschach test. For Hollywood, he is a box-office premise. For gamers, a controversial character.

But for those of us engaged in global Black cinema, he represents a far more urgent question: Who has the right to tell our stories — and from what soil must those stories grow?