Slam

Raymond Joshua, a young poet, is arrested on a small marijuana charge in Washington and put in jail. Inside is dangerous; there he meets a gang leader and Lauren Bell, who runs a writing workshop. Bell shows him something: the word is a power inside, even if it is not one outside. Marc Levin shot the film like a documentary; most of the dialogue is improvised and the poems recited are the actors' own. The poet Saul Williams plays Raymond and Sonja Sohn plays Lauren. Its subject is the relationship Black men in America have with the justice system, and the film tells it through one person's story rather than through statistics. It took the grand jury prize at Sundance in 1998 and the Caméra d'Or at Cannes.