When Muhammad Bilal is not operating as a school principal at New Dawn Charter High School in Queens, he can be seen working as a mental health advocate and filmmaker.
At his school, Bilal, 46, works with under-credited students aged 16-21, many of whom are at risk. He is intentional about providing mental health resources for Black men and boys. One of the ways he does it is through his film company, Bilal Entertainment
“We want to shift the way Black men and Black boys view mental health,” Bilal said. “We’re confronting the stigma with information and really looking at it and how it impacts people.”
This past Saturday, his company hosted the event, “Confronting the Stigma” at P.S. 180 Hugo Newman School in Harlem, featuring a Black men’s mental health resource fair, film screening, and panel discussion. This was the third event of its kind put together by Bilal and his assistant creative director, Dionna El. The fair hosted between 12 and 15 organizations that focus on mental health and family services, including Orchard Blue Counseling, Mount Sinai, Path2Growth Counseling, and Seeds of Empowerment.
At their previous events held in Chicago in 2024 and Hostos Community College in the Bronx in 2025, they had up to 500 attendees at both. This past event in Harlem had around 150 guests.
The film shown during the screening was “Perdido,” which Bilal wrote and co-executive-produced with El. It premiered in 2024 and follows a Black adult male, Amir, through his mental journey, and is loosely based on Bilal’s story.
“I wanted to share my journey with the hopes that I would inspire somebody else to take this journey too … everybody should have a therapist,” Bilal said. “That really made me deal with stuff that I didn’t even know that I still needed to heal from.”
The title means “lost” in Spanish, and refers to how Black men can feel that way without outlets like therapy to work through the unique challenges they face in society.
“A lot of brothers out here are lost, don’t know how to deal with it, don’t quite know what’s going on, there isn’t an outlet to discuss it, you can’t be vulnerable … we don’t really understand the language and how to articulate it,” Bilal said.
Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Bilal was involved in African Dance Theatre and was raised Muslim. His mother was involved in the Black Panther Movement with Fred Hampton, while his father in Harlem was involved with the Nation of Islam. The arts were able to be an outlet for him, eventually getting a scholarship to DePaul University.
Despite his parents’ work, Bilal’s own enlightenment was really sparked after seeing Spike Lee’s 1992 film “Malcolm X” as a child. After this, he knew education and film could be avenues to address social issues, inspire, and make change.
“I wanted to be a teacher like Malcolm and a filmmaker like Spike,” Bilal said. “I saw education and film, just two different mediums to do the same thing, to enlighten people, to touch people … and I think filmmaking is the most transformative and powerful tool you can use.”
To this day, Bilal even keeps a photo of Malcolm X in his office.
“I honestly didn’t think I was going to live to be a teenager at 12. I had seen people get murdered, I had been shot at, I had been roughed up by the police, I was going through child abuse. But after seeing Malcolm X’s transformation, I was transformed,” Bilal continued.
Bilal first taught in Chicago and then in South Africa. After getting his master’s degree from DePaul University, Bilal moved to New York and continued teaching, while also taking acting classes. He has held several roles in education, including teacher, dean, educational consultant, and principal across the tri-state area. He has been the principal of New Dawn since 2023.
Bilal says he was always intentional about teaching in areas like the ones he grew up in to be able to help the most vulnerable students.
However, it wasn’t until 2020 that he dealt with mental health personally and realized it needed to be first and foremost addressed to help young Black boys and men.
The trauma of seeing the events of 2020 and Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and several others murdered by police, made him want to attend therapy, which was new territory. During this journey, Bilal was inspired to write “Perdido.”
“I really wanted to demystify therapy and show how powerful it can be for your journey to heal and take control of your life. We talk about Black wealth and all this other stuff, but if the mind isn’t strong and you don’t have strong mental hygiene, you can’t function.” Bilal said. “If you confront it and deal with it on the other end, you’ll come out stronger, but also, it’s a journey.”
He founded Bilal Entertainment in 2020, with the focus of creating films that have a social impact. In 2021, he began pre-production and crowdfunded for the film; Kyrie Irving even donated.
“Perdido” has been featured at around 50 film festivals and even won at the Hip Hop Film Festival. The largest premiere was at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival last August.
Bilal is also heavily involved with leadership in his fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma, both regionally and internationally. At some point, he wants to get a doctorate in Diaspora Studies at Howard University.
With his company, Bilal and El are looking to create feature length films and mini series, including one chronicling his recent struggles as a principal dealing with unsupportive education officials. He has noted that at New Dawn, he has had to step in when a student was being stabbed. He is preparing to go to New Beginnings Charter High School in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
El says working with Bilal and the film has even helped her personal journey in mental health and as a parent.
“It’s been a pure blessing to be able to work with him,” El said.
Despite the smaller attendance in Harlem, Bilal is proud of all the connections made with community leaders and is hopeful about being able to affect change in mental health and beyond.
“If mentally you have not dealt with your own triggers and your own mental problems, you can’t work with anybody,” Bilal said. He highlighted the need for Black people to be healthy in order to fight back against the current administration and the rolling back of civil rights protections.
“We do so well, even when we’re oppressed, just imagine if our minds were right … we haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg of what we could do if we deal with the years of trauma and neglect on our brains.”
