This is the story of Kalief Browder and his mother. Their lives were upended when Kalief found himself in trouble with the law and forced to spend years in solitary confinement.
This is less a biography, but a meditation on jails, prison, criminal justice and the tolls the families caught in the wrong end of the system. The film uses Kalief's tragic tale to let up know how broken the system is. It also uses Venida's words to make us feel the pain.
Give this film a huge number of points for bringing together a large number of important topics. Its a film that looks not just how broken things are now and how bad they were in the past. The film also tries to look a head. It's a heady mix of topics that are going to make you think long and hard about how we treat "criminals".
At the same time the film is very unfocused. Yes, the film is experimental in it's construction, but at the same time it never pulls it all together. We jump from thing to thing and then back again. While we are pulled in in some glorious moments, there are other times when we end up on the outside looking in. By the time the film began to focus on the bulldozing of Rikers Island for a solar/battery farm I was too far on the outside to ever go back in.
This is worth a look for the arguments it makes, but not for how it presents them.