Born in 1902, Sarah Rector was a black woman under whose private Oklahoma land there was oil, thus paving the way for a millionaire’s status. Cyrus Nowrasteh‘s film Sarah’s Oil (2025) is loosely based on this interesting story, yielding some inaccurate detail, and it’s moving and tasteful and Christian. All the same, it has limited authenticity about rural life and racial relations in the 1910s. Newcomer Naya Desir-Johnson is fine as 11-year-old Sarah* but her likable character is too precocious to be believable. The film is unconvincing, its Christianity, in point of fact, rather remote.

*Sarah, then, started getting rich at an early age. Unfortunately, she lost most of her wealth in the Great Depression.