Rosewood

A film about something that happened in America. The place is Florida, the year 1923. Rosewood is a small town of black families; the people own houses, shops and land. Nearby Sumner is a white town, and between the two settlements there is an invisible line. A woman in Sumner says she was beaten and that the man was black. Her statement is not true. The news spreads. A crowd gathers, arms itself and walks to Rosewood. From there the film covers a week of violence. Houses are burned, people run into the woods, and the town disappears entirely. What the narrative is interested in is not one lie but why the lie worked so easily: some of the whites in the area already had their eyes on their neighbours' land and shops. There are people who help. A shopkeeper and a train driver hide and carry the escaping families; the film shows this not as heroism but as a calculated and frightened choice. Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Don Cheadle, Esther Rolle and Bruce McGill are in the cast. John Singleton directed. The film took far less at the box office than expected; the event itself went unrecorded officially for many years, and in the 1990s the state of Florida paid compensation to survivors. Who it is for: anyone interested in the history of racial violence in America. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an easy watch; the violence is prolonged and the film offers no consolation anywhere.