Passing You By: Impostorism on Film

A Black woman and her white-passing childhood friend reunite in 1920s Harlem, threatening both of their carefully constructed lives.

Among the first mainstream Hollywood films to tackle the subject of racial discrimination against Black Americans, Pinky tells the story of a white-passing nurse in the South.

Denzel Washington turns up the heat as an LA private investigator in this steamy mystery directed by Carl Franklin.

Oscar Micheaux’s bold 1920 rebuttal to the infamous The Birth of a Nation screens alongside Julie Dash’s subversive short about a female, white-passing Hollywood executive.

Coming to America casts comedian Eddie Murphy as pampered African prince Akeem, who rebels against an arranged marriage and heads to the US to find a bride while passing as a poor student.

In this Nollywood folk horror family melodrama, Jennifer, an ogbanje (evil spirit child), passes for human.

Katharine Hepburn plays a young English woman who passes as a boy to sneak her crooked father from Marseille to London.

A trio of bumbling young men are mistaken for undocumented Koreans in a cutting commentary on Japan’s treatment of immigrants, with director Nagisa Ôshima at his most politically engaged and madcap.

When Omar, a young Palestinian freedom fighter accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets, is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police.

Marlon and Shawn Wayans portray two FBI agent brothers in hot water after foiling a drug bust, who disguise themselves as white socialite girls in an attempt to bait a kidnapper.

A teen is convinced her writing isn’t taken seriously because she is a girl, so she passes as a boy in this loose adaptation of Twelfth Night.

Two young men pretend to be gay in order to avoid the draft, a situation that spirals wildly as they expand their ruse, in this groundbreaking, controversial 1969 comedy directed by Bruce Kessler.

A gay couple pass for a conservative straight couple when their son’s future in-laws come to visit, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

The first film adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s 1933 best-selling novel explores the friendship between two struggling single mothers, a white businesswoman and a Black housekeeper.

A white, widowed mother befriends a Black single mom and domestic, whose daughter Sarah passes as white, in this cornerstone interrogation of mid-century American life.