Darol Olu Kae is an artist and filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles. His practice combines narrative, documentary, and experimental filmmaking to explore Black American life and culture. Kae’s highly collaborative and research-based approach often draws inspiration from local community histories and the legacy of creative Black art forms, like jazz. He challenges conventional cinematic forms by blurring the lines between fact and fiction, challenging the medium to render the full complexity and profound lyricism of Black experience visible on screen.

Kae’s films have screened at festivals and institutions worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, Locarno Film Festival, MoMA, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). In 2020, his short film i ran from it and was still in it won the Pardino d’oro for Best International Short Film at Locarno and received a Special Jury Recognition for Poetry at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival. Recognized as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2022, Kae is a 2024-25 Creative Capital Awardee and an inaugural 2025 Black Film Project Fellow at Harvard University.

He is currently writing his feature film debut, Without a Song, and is starting production on his documentary feature Message to the Messenger.