Media Alert!

“Games In Black & White” to Make World Premiere at 2025 Atlanta Film FestivalOne of the festival’s marquee films, the documentary explores the intersection of Atlanta’s civil rights legacy and the 1996 Olympic Games.

April 2025 (Atlanta, GA) — Atlanta Story Partners announced that its debut feature documentary, The Games in Black & White, will have its world premiere on April 26th at the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival, where it has been selected as one of the festival’s marquee films.

The film tells the powerful, untold story of how Ambassador Andrew Young and Atlanta Olympic CEO Billy Payneharnessed the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games as a platform for social justice and international peace. Set against the backdrop of Atlanta’s civil rights legacy, Games in Black & White offers a fresh and intimate look at what has been called the largest peacetime gathering in history — and the rare Black and white partnership that made it possible.

Alahna Lark, one of the film’s lead producers, brings her signature lens to the project, drawing from Atlanta’s rich cultural and historical roots.

“This film gave us the space to grapple with the full legacy of the Atlanta Olympics — the good, the bad, and the deeply complicated. My goal was to ensure that we didn’t look away from the hard truths: the displacement of Black communities, the impact of the bombing. But we also felt a responsibility to our city to tell the full story — to uplift the moments of pride and progress that became completely overshadowed. Atlanta became a global city because of these Games, and that legacy deserves to be understood in its entirety.”

-Alahna Lark

Directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Bob Judson and written by Olympic historian George Hirthler, Games in Black & White features interviews with over 35 key figures, including Ambassador Young, Billy Payne, Martin Luther King III, former Mayor Shirley Franklin, and leaders from both the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and the international Olympic community.

The film also brings in the heartbeat of Atlanta through music. Producer Rohan Backfisch tapped Grammy-winning music producer Dallas Austin as music supervisor, alongside composer Joe Alterman, and features an original song by Austin with lyrics by rising rapper Champp called The City Too Busy To Hate, which drops worldwide this month.

The film explores “The Bid, The Games, and The Legacy” — chronicling not only the achievement of bringing the Olympics to the American South, but also the cultural, political, and deeply human narratives that still echo nearly three decades later.

Visit AtlantaStoryPartners.com for more information.