Selah and the Spades is a 2019 American drama film written and directed by Tayarisha Poe in her feature directorial debut.

Selah Summers is a senior at the elite Haldwell Boarding School in Pennsylvania, where she leads a drug-dealing faction of students known as the Spades.

Unlike the school's four other factions- the Sea, the Skins, the Bobbies, and the Prefects- the Spades have not yet nominated a candidate to replace Selah as their leader when she graduates.

Selah receives a call from her mother demanding she return home, where she is confronted about her failure to respond to a college acceptance letter.

At an emergency meeting, Selah and Bobby angrily blame each other for the cancellation before Paloma suggests that they instead throw their own prom outside of the school grounds.

Director Tayarisha Poe stated that she was inspired to write the script because she wanted to see a film with characters that looked like her getting to experience the "unlimited potential and freedom" that she remembered feeling as a teenager.

[3] This project, which she called an "overture", launched online in 2014 and quickly garnered attention, including from film director Terence Nance.

The website's critics consensus reads: "A smart, well-acted, and refreshingly messy coming-of-age story, Selah and the Spades suggests a bright future for debuting writer-director Tayarisha Poe.

But think of how many debuts of fresh young filmmakers you’ve seen over the years, and how that initial spark eventually gifted us with careers defined by exponential level-ups.

[14] Critic Teo Bugbee wrote that "While there is simple pleasure in watching a movie that is so precisely produced, Selah and the Spades aims to do more than look good.

It is expressive, using images to make dynamic statements — student leaders on opposing sides of a table become a makeshift war council; Selah swipes her braids over her shoulder and is transformed into a figure of ultimate power."

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian likened it to Heathers and suggested "it is an intriguing, opaque, tonally elusive story that seems weirdly unfinished.