Atlanta’s “The Games in Black & White” Olympic documentary hit silver screens at an April 26 Rialto Center for the Arts premiere with a dual distribution deal via Delta Air Lines’ inflight entertainment and Georgia Public Broadcasting.
The film will air on Delta’s in-flight entertainment system from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025. It will also air as a “prime-time” Georgia Public Broadcasting film sometime in July and on the channel’s digital platform.
“The Games in Black & White” premiered as a Special Presentation through the Atlanta Film Festival, run by the Atlanta Film Society. The Film Society’s Executive Director, Chris Escobar, said the distribution deal is an accomplishment for the festival, which aims to bring independent filmmakers around the world into the heart of the city.
“Our festival helps independent filmmakers like Atlanta Story Partners to find larger audiences for their work,” Escobar said.
It’s been a lengthy journey to bring the film to fruition. Production kicked off in early 2020 before the onset of coronavirus shut things down. It resumed in 2022, completed filming in 2023, and rounded out post through spring 2025.
“The Games in Black & White” tells the story of how Billy Payne and Andrew Young joined forces to bring the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, billed as the “largest peacetime gathering in history.” It’s told in three parts: the big, the games and the legacy.
The feature-length film finds its inspiration in the unlikely partnership between a football star and a civil rights hero and how their joint effort won Atlanta a long-shot bid to host the 100th annual Olympic Games.
It’s a project by Atlanta Story Partners, a Georgia production company led by writer George Hirthler and filmmaker Bob Judson. Hirthler is a career Olympic bid writer and expert on games founder de Coubertin.
But when Hirthler thought of making a film about the Olympics, he knew to call career filmmaker Bob Judson. Over a glass of wine in 2019, the duo decided it was the Payne-Young partnership that deserved the spotlight.
It’s a diligent artifact of the 1996 games. Hirthler and Judson take time to spotlight the dinner parties between global officials, the emotional challenges of the high-stake work, and the economic opportunity program that catapulted many Atlantans to entrepreneurial success.
“The Games in Black & White” is also a film that believes deeply in the original vision of the Olympic Games. French educator and historian Pierre de Coubertin co-founded the International Olympic Committee to promote “Olympism” as a means for cross-cultural connection and understanding that can promote peace and prevent war.
At the premiere, Hirthler recalled how the Olympic values aligned with Atlanta’s history.
“Billy and Andy believed that Atlanta had a special message for the world,” Hirthler said. “That message was that the Civil Rights movement born here shares the same values as the Olympic movement.”
The film draws those connections through interviews with Young and Payne, as well as Olympic Champion Janet Evans, former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Martin Luther King III and former First Lady of Atlanta Valerie Jackson. It also spotlights Atlanta’s art scene with an original theme song, “City Too Buy to Hate.”
The resulting movie is a music-laden saga of sheer, unrelenting effort and creative solutions that brought the games to Atlanta, the work to make the city benefit from the event, and the lasting impacts it has left in the decades since.
Reflecting on the games, Ambassador Andrew Young called the games a “constellation of little miracles” that came together in city streets.
“This is a fulfillment of what I dreamed about when I came to Atlanta,” Young said. “I didn’t have any idea that any of these things could happen, but I saw in the people of Atlanta and have continued to see in the people of Atlanta our ability to rise to the occasion.”
