Protect or Neglect

United States, September 1st, 2016. American football player Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem, protesting police brutality against black people. Part of the population regards the gesture as an unacceptable affront to the flag. Later, he loses his place on his team. Today, however, he is considered by many as a true hero.

A groundbreaking documentary created by the community of Watts, California — including rival gang members, police officers, victims of violence, and kids just trying to survive.

By the dawn of the 21st century, hip-hop sales had reached an all-time high, but one thing has remained the same. The doors were still locked, and the music industry held the keys. Young artists began to self-market on the Internet, ultimately helping to collapse the music industry as we knew it. It’s Yours explores how it became possible to become a rap star through a Twitter account, YouTube site or Myspace page. It tells this story through the unique perspectives of numerous artists, producers, record industry insiders, and music and cultural critics.

Yonatan, an ultra-Orthodox young man protesting against conscription into the IDF, offering his perspective on the yeshiva, the conscription, and socks.

The documentary tells the story of Júlio César, a young Afro-Brazilian who was executed by the Police in the 1980s in Porto Alegre. The crime became notorious when the press published photos of Julius being put alive in the police car and arriving 37 minutes later shot and dead at the hospital.

An in-depth look at the culture of Los Angeles in the ten years leading up to the 1992 uprising that erupted after the verdict of police officers cleared of beating Rodney King.

Documentary film exploring the lives of the people at the flashpoint of the LA riots, 25 years after the uprising made national headlines and highlighted the racial divide in America.

When Covid-19 hit New York City in 2020, filmmaker Matthew Heineman gained unique access to one of New York’s hardest-hit hospital systems. The resulting film focuses on the doctors, nurses, and patients on the frontlines during the “first wave” from March to June 2020. Their distinct storylines each serve as a microcosm to understand how the city persevered through the worst pandemic in a century

An in-depth and provocative look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots exploring the roots of civil unrest in California and the relationship between African Americans and LAPD.

In 1978 the police attacked demonstrators at the Sydney (Australia) Mardi Gras celebrations. This film details the communities' responses.

1995. On the outskirts of Abidjan, the largest city in Ivory Coast, a policeman is murdered. Shot outside his vehicle, while his fiancée sits in the car, terrified. Superintendent Kouassi is the detective in charge of the investigation. Tall and lanky, he moves with the tired energy of a man who has seen it all. Drawing on a network of underworld characters with dubious information, Kouassi’s team begins bringing in potential suspects and subjecting them to horrific brutality: beating them with sticks, hanging them upside-down, threatening their lives. Some of the men are left so broken they have to literally drag themselves into Kouassi’s office later, to be interrogated while lying on the floor, their bodies a mess of bruises, broken bones, and lacerations.

Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.

Documentary about Joel da Conceição Castro, a ten years old boy killed by a police bullet in 2010.

The most crude and atrocious institutional violence of the Spanish State hides behind a true dark figure, an abyss into which this documentary peers through 30 firsthand accounts.

This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement.

This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.

On 12 June 2000, in Rio de Janeiro, Ônibus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to kill all the passengers. Transmitted live on all national networks, this shocking and tragic event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the most terrifying examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

As the first part of our investigation, the CORONA.FILM prologue will delve into the science behind the pandemic. Starting at the very beginning, we shine a light on the responses. The aim is not to point the finger; our aim is to tell the whole story in all its complexity, as we believe that justice cannot prevail if only one side of the story is told.

Behind the gas masks of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, the often very young activists are just as diverse as the youths of the rest of the world. But they share a demand for democracy and freedom. They have the will and the courage to fight – and they can see that things are going in the wrong direction in the small island city, which officially has autonomy under China but is now tightening its grip and demanding that ‘troublemakers’ be put away or silenced. Amid the violent protests, we meet a 21-year-old student, a teenage couple and a new father.