I have been both a Selah and a Paloma; that's why I wrote this story because I felt as though the Paloma parts of myself were a lot easier to digest and a lot more acceptable, being the shy, observant, outsider, having a good time, but not too much. Warning: You may lose the entire afternoon reading old spoilers! It's all about the reality of how it feels for Selah as opposed to the reality of how it is. What started me writing that story was just this desire to see somebody who looked like me and felt like me, but who got to live a life however they wanted, no matter the consequences and they just kept doing that.

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Bobby confronts Selah about one of her faction’s orders being wrong, and notes Maxxie is responsible for the orders.

Bobby tells Paloma the factions like her and not to let Selah let her think otherwise.

She tells Selah the parable of the scorpion and the frog, implying Selah has a dark nature and needs to be protected from herself. At the head of the most powerful faction – THE SPADES – sits Selah Summers. Throughout the film, viewers get an intimate view of the experiences of black kids in a boarding school environment, while also focusing on Selah.

Paloma balks, but Selah explains that this is what they have to do to keep power. Along with Selah, the film focuses on her right-hand man Maxxie (Emmy winner Jharrel Jerome), and their newest recruit, Paloma (Celeste O'Connor). Paloma says she may handle things differently. This imaginative world doubles as a journey into Poe's truth of coming of age without the burdens of historical traumas weighing into her everyday decisions as a black student in boarding school. A smart, well-acted, and refreshingly messy coming-of-age story, Selah and the Spades suggests a bright future for … I thought maybe I should just write a movie where she is not the villain. What informed this decision? SALON ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. The spades are in charge of all the drug trade at the school.

Five factions run the underground life of Haldwell School, a prestigious east coast boarding school. I grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, around Baltimore Avenue, where I spent most of my childhood and my 20s. Selah and the Spades Critics Consensus. Black teenagers at a bougie boarding school lead double lives, masking drug use and partying with school plays and cheerleading.

Priscilla Ward is an over-caffeinated, D.C.-based writer, running enthusiast, music explorer, and founder of BLCKNLIT. They show Paloma where they keep the drugs and the ledger they keep and begin teaching her the business of the spades. The most powerful faction is The Spades. When Paloma asks innocuous questions about prom, Selah snaps at her and tells her she can’t deal with her. Five factions run the underground life of the prestigious Haldwell boarding school. I think for Selah there's this realization of what could have happened if they had not stopped Paloma or had not been there to help Paloma up. Selah is graduating soon and hopes to train Paloma to follow in her footsteps. New Headmaster Banton (Jesse Williams) meets with new scholarship student Paloma Davis (Celeste O’Connor) to see how she’s adjusting, and she tells him she’s taking photos for the yearbook.

Selah looks out over the railing, realizing what she could have done, and the three of them start to head back to prom together.

I think it's damaging because it's such a limited perspective of black people. Selah (Lovie Simone) runs the most prominent of these, The Spades… The film first premiered as a NEXT selection at  Sundance last year and makes its way to Amazon Prime, joining the slew of other movies available to stream in April.

While her dictator was her mother, mine is a capitalistic system. I think it took me, a black woman and another black woman standing on a stage and shouting, "You already like these films; you just want them to be white men. Na zmianę urocza i bezlitosna, decyduje o tym, kogo trzymać blisko, a z kim się nie zadawać – albo ją kochasz, albo się jej boisz. Few onscreen playgrounds allow black youth to be wild and free without punishment. Prom arrives, and Selah slips some of the drugs into a drink and gives it to Paloma, who quickly begins to feel strange. At the head of the most powerful faction - The Spades - sits Selah Summers, walking the fine line between being feared and loved. As the most popular girl in school, she knows she has power, but throughout the film, she learns what she's willing to compromise for that power.

I think for Selah her focus is the potential negative consequences of her actions and that's why she seems as though she disconnects from her reality, and she is super focused on what is over that ledge. I was interested in seeing how Paloma's interactions with Selah changes as Paloma's power grows. Paloma slaps Selah and runs off into the woods and falls over a railing, but Selah and Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) are able to hoist her back up.

Tarit comes to Selah and tells her the rat is suspected to be a young prefect, but will keep digging, wanting to avoid a war like they had sophomore year. This power struggle is explored as Selah mentors Paloma, a transfer student who is an observant free-spirited photographer. After doing that enough times. The factions come together and plan a huge prom in the woods. Selah (Lovie Simone) runs the most prominent of these, The Spades, who are a group of drug dealers.

I was both Selah and Paloma in high school. Paloma later asks Maxxie, who admits that he mixed up the order.

Both charming and callous, Selah walks the fine line between being feared and loved, often cutting loose whomever she deems a … Maxxie returns from the pickup, beaten to hell. Usually, a story like "Selah and The Spades" centers on a character like Paloma.

I'm trying to make films for myself at the age of 15, and I'm just trying to think about what would have been the ball for me because being a teenager is hard. The whole point of this secret society was to do good things for people on campus.

With Lovie Simone, Jharrel Jerome, Celeste O'Connor, Ana Mulvoy Ten. Paloma doesn’t want to and starts to leave, but Selah berates her. Like the novel "Lord of the Flies" the youth at Haldwell govern themselves. Eventually, Selah becomes threatened and jealous of Paloma and drugs her at the prom.