Commemorating 19 June, 1865, Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the last slaves in Texas being freed after receiving news of the abolition of slavery two-and-a-half years earlier.

In Fort Worth, Texas, they run a beauty pageant for teenage girls to mark the occasion, the winner receiving a scholarship to a University.

At the beginning of Channing Godfrey Peoples’ debut feature film, MISS JUNETEENTH, we meet Turquoise Jones cleaning a toilet bowl as she begins her shift at the local bar. As she walks, mop and bucket in hand, we see the portrait of her past victory in the Miss Juneteenth pageant as it hangs on the wall.

It’s a faded glory that did not pan out as planned due to a teenage pregnancy. Turquoise is now channeling her dashed hopes and dreams on her daughter, Charlotte, pressing her into the pageant. Charlotte doesn’t share the same passion for the parade and so contest turns into conflict.

Sometimes the best dramas come from subjects one would ordinarily run a mile from. People who despise pugilism cannot deny the power of films like The Set-Up, Raging Bull or Rocky. Similarly, beauty pageants are anathema to many, but to bypass MISS JUNETEENTH would be to miss a story of a phenomenal woman full of persistence and resilience.

Indeed, MISS JUNETEENTH references the 1995 Maya Angelou poem ‘Phenomenal Woman’, a work that becomes a leitmotif of the film as mother and daughter reconcile in a story that is ultimately about hope, as well as a cautionary tale of living your aspirations through your children.

Nicole Beharie is luminous as Turquoise, proud, resolute and determined to a fault, protective and ambitious for her daughter, a fierceness leavened by vulnerability through emotion and economics.

MISS JUNETEENTH is one of those small cinematic gems whose beauty isn’t in its pageantry but in its soul.