17 Blocks

The documentary tells twenty years of a family in Washington largely through home video they shot themselves. In 1999 the director met two boys from the neighbourhood and gave them a camera; after that the family took over the recording. Cheryl, the mother, her children and her grandchildren grow up inside those images; the years spent with addiction, gun violence and poverty are on the same tapes. The loss the family goes through stands at the centre of the film, and the account gives it in their own voices rather than in the language of the news. The title comes from the distance between the neighbourhood and the Capitol. Davy Rothbart’s ninety eight minute documentary was completed in 2019.