“If we hadn’t started the Standing in the Gap film and fund, she would have been just another dead black person.”
These chilling words were spoken to me recently by Pamela Dias, the mother of Ajike “AJ” Owens, about her daughter. Viewers of the Netflix social justice sensation The perfect neighbor will know Dias in the film’s final scenes, when she emerges from the tragic mist as a hero trying to make sense of her daughter’s death in a senseless Stand Your Ground murder.
These are dark times for documentaries; only the naive would deny it. Global streamers have been timid about politically charged or even politically adjacent content — meaning that complex, relevant films aren’t financed, purchased, or, most importantly, seen. The number of artist-approved music documentaries is enough to fill 10 USB drives at Primary Wave, the intellectual property manager of music rights. Impactful surveys? They are less common.
But even under such difficult conditions, a number of documentaries on this year’s Oscar longlist address social justice topics. More specifically, they attempt to to provoke social justice.
The perfect neighbor is a perfect example. Dias, along with activist and friend of Owens, Takema Robinson, launched an organization in conjunction with the film’s release. “This is the mission of Standing in the Gap. Thanks to The perfect neighbor, we hope [change] “Stand Your Ground and also hoping to raise resources to support other families affected by racial violence in the future,” Robinson tells me, referring primarily to controversial laws that allow for an aggressive form of self-defense and disproportionately victimize people of color. “We’re trying to create really powerful art that moves hearts and minds toward some type of change,” she adds.
Currently, 38 states have Stand Your Ground laws. And while Robinson and Dias don’t have much hope of changing the law in Florida, where it originated 20 years ago, they see scope for weakening it in places like Pennsylvania and Minnesota.
In the meantime, CoverLaura Poitras’ new film about the professional complexities of journalist Seymour Hersh — and the simple importance of a free press — has been making the rounds at journalism schools and other venues where its message is needed. At a recent gala in New York for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Hersh and Poitras attested to the importance of protecting endangered media, which applies to this country today almost as much as to CPJ’s traditional battleground in the Global South. “If you start taking freedom for granted, you’ve already lost it,” Hersh told me as we listened to poignant and inspiring stories from Beijing to Bolivia.
And Mariska Hargitay, who produced the film DOC NYC by Lorena Luciano Nuns against the Vaticanjust sent a long note to the Vatican with a link to the film. The film tells the story of dozens of women allegedly sexually and spiritually abused by former Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik and the Church’s alleged protection of him. Hargitay and other filmmakers hope their efforts will allow victims to testify at his canonical trial, which has not yet been approved.
A concrete example of a world-changing documentary appeared 20 years ago, when An inconvenient truth shed light on climate change. This film had such an impact that one study found that postcodes within a 10-mile radius of screenings showed a 50% increase in the purchase of carbon offsets. Michael Moore also mobilized gun control activism with Bowling for Columbine.
True crime has a long history of changing the real world, says Errol Morris The thin blue line resulting in a conviction being overturned, with accused killer Robert Durst facing a retrial and re-sentence after The curse.
And there is a model for the criminal justice reform brought about by documentaries. Under the first Trump administration, Congress passed the First Step Act to reform federal sentencing laws after lawmakers were briefed The sentencea poignant Sundance film about a mother of three daughters who spent years in prison due to a minor, non-violent drug offense.
It’s unclear whether this year’s harvest can have that kind of systemic impact. But the producers are certainly trying. Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s indictment against the prison-industrial complex The Alabama Solution from HBO is looking for exactly that. As UPI’s Fred Topel wrote, “If inmates can advance their activism from within prison walls, it suggests that even greater things are possible when people with more resources join forces.” »
One reason these films can have an impact even as their distribution power diminishes is that the line between activism and journalism is rapidly blurring.
Many nonfiction films from earlier eras sought to stand above the fray, but that way of thinking has changed. Geeta Gandbhir, who directed Neighboris an unapologetic advocate; this is part of his first relationship with his subjects. “I think as an artist or a filmmaker, my job is to be a vehicle,” Gandbhir tells me. “Activism is cinema.”
Journalism classes will debate whether this is a good thing. Certainly, we are less likely to see carefully impartial investigations into a subject; the 2006 founding document on abortion Lake of Firein which director Tony Kaye examined the issue from all angles, now seems much more difficult to imagine. In many ways, the promotion of our documentary space is a further consequence of the broader polarization of our world, in which it often seems that no sentence can be uttered without planting a flag on an issue.
However, it would be foolish to overlook all the good that this trend can bring. In a time when injustice rages in many areas and documentary film is struggling in many areas, this latest take a swing and swing may not be the worst idea. The number of ambiguous and uncompromising documentaries may be dwindling, but the tools to repair a broken world are increasing. Just ask Pamela Dias.
This story first appeared in a December standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
