Detropia

Detroit was the city that carried America's story through the twentieth century: the migration north of Black people escaping the Jim Crow laws, the rise of manufacturing and the middle class, the car, the American dream. The documentary films that city after the collapse of the economy. The population has halved, the streets are empty, houses are being demolished and the city government is discussing shrinking the city. The film was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady together. The camera follows three or four people: a union official, a woman running a bar, a man keeping a video blog. The telling proposes no solution and points at no culprit; it describes what is happening by looking from there. Some critics found the film too aesthetic and accused it of shooting ruin beautifully. Against that, what the people living in the city say is its soundest section, and in that section nobody is speaking for the film.