A Reckoning in Boston (2021)

• 77%
• 2021
• Documentary
• James Rutenbeck
• Kafi Dixon
• Carl Chandler
• James Rutenbeck

Kafi Dixon is a Boston bus driver and urban farmer who seeks equity for low-income women of color who have experienced trauma and disenfranchisement. Carl Chandler, a community elder wants to tell his family's story to the wider world. They gather with twenty other adults living along the poverty line at a community center in Boston to study art, history, philosophy and literature in a rigorous yearlong tuition-free night course. Kafi reads dialogues about the city in Plato's Republic, yet faces rejection in her own hometown, a prosperous metropolis swept up by the allure of development and gentrification. Carl, a disabled senior citizen who raised two daughters as a single father, cares for his grandson and reads voraciously. James Rutenbeck, a white filmmaker from the suburbs, has come here to document their lives. Over five years he witnesses evictions, chaos and calm persistence. He wants to remain a witness and allow Carl and Kafi to tell their own stories, but over time comes to understand the film cannot be fully realized until he speaks up too.