For Ahkeem
Right Now Film Festival
Mon 26 Mar 2018
Category
Price
£7*
Time
8.15pm
Mon 26 Mar 2018
Price
£7*
Time
8.15pm
Dir. Jeremy S. Levine & Landon Van Soest, 2017, 90 mins, USA
From award-winning directors Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest, For Ahkeem is an intimate coming-of-age story that illuminates the challenges that many Black teenagers face in America today, and witnesses the strength, resilience, and determination it takes to survive.
After a school fight lands 17-year old Daje Shelton in a court-supervised alternative high school, shes determined to turn things around and make a better future for herself in her rough St. Louis neighborhood. But focusing on school is tough as she loses multiple friends to gun violence, falls in love for the first time, and becomes pregnant with a boy, Ahkeem, just as Ferguson erupts a few miles down the road. Poignantly examining how the justice system can prevent people from escaping a life of poverty, For Ahkeem asks the question of whether social mobility really exists for all.
‘For Ahkeem is about as close as documentaries come to putting us inside the mind of someone who society easily overlooks.’
ROGEREBERT.COM
‘A quietly impactful documentary with the texture of a narrative feature.’ HOLLYWOOD REPORTER