Barry Jenkins, Director, Moonlight: The first time I heard “Every Nigger Is a Star,” like most people, was on Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly. A lot of the music in the film was actually written into the screenplay, but this was not. We were going through post-production and I felt like we had to rage at the beginning. I kept thinking I wanted to plant a flag at the very beginning of this film. I was some on blog and read the actual story of that song. It was taken from a blaxploitation film in the ’70s, and I thought that the purpose of that film aligned with the purpose of our film—that these lives are valid and they’re worth exploring. I imagine whoever showed the sample to Kendrick, that he had the same experience when he heard it. This movie isn’t about the entirety of the black experience, but in recognizing that people from our neighborhood don’t get films made about them often.