Tales of the Grim Sleeper

Over more than twenty years a large number of young Black women were murdered in South Los Angeles. In 2010 the police arrested a man named Lonnie Franklin Jr. and announced it as the result of twenty years of investigation. Nick Broomfield took his camera into the neighbourhood itself and found another story there: reports of missing women had not been taken seriously for years, because those missing were poor, Black, and some of them were addicted. Broomfield's film covers less the investigation than why it took so long. He talks to people in the neighbourhood, to victims' families, and to a woman who survived. The terms used for the victims in police records are the film's harshest passage. As always Broomfield does not hide his own presence behind the camera, and at times that can be felt straining the method. Franklin was tried and convicted in 2016, after the film. Who it's for: Viewers who like true-crime documentary, narratives of institutional neglect, and Nick Broomfield. Who it's not for: The subject is murder and sexual violence and some accounts are very hard. The film's approach in certain scenes is also ethically arguable.