Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for The Body Beautiful
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1991 · FILM

The Body Beautiful

Directed by
Runtime
25 min
Drama

Synopsis

Onwurah’s film explores the relationship between a white mother undergoing a radical mastectomy and her Black daughter who becomes a model, highlighting the impact of body image and the pressures of racial and sexual identity on their complex, deeply affectionate bond. Central to the film is an interweaving of memory and fantasy that delves into the mother’s marginalized sexuality. The work examines maternal resilience and daughterly loyalty, featuring Onwurah’s real-life mother, Madge Onwurah, in a standout performance.

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 20

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Liz WebberShot by Peter CollisScored by Jonathon HirstDesigned by Rosalind Hackett

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating, logline. Sign in to add what you know.