#WhileBlack
(USA/Canada, 84 min.)
Dir. Sidney Fussell, Jennifer Holness
Prod. Ann Shin, Mariam Bastani, Sidney Fussell
Programme: Digital Witnesses (Canadian premiere)
The only constant in life is change. Moments of joy and sorrow inevitably fade as we drift towards tomorrow’s looming horizon. But in the digital age, not everyone is granted the grace of leaving their past behind. In a world where everything gets recorded, what if the worst day of your life was trapped in amber and showcased for the world to see?
How does someone heal when they’re forced to relive their trauma on a constant loop? And what kind of system is willing to plunder a victim’s PTSD as fuel for the attention economy? These questions exist at the heart of #WhileBlack, the new documentary from directors Sidney Fussell and Jennifer Holness. Building on these themes, their film examines the impact of citizen journalism in the digital age and the rapacious systems mining Black trauma for profit.
On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old Minneapolis resident Darnella Frazier took her younger cousin to the convenience store and inadvertently filmed one of the most consequential viral videos of the digital era — the killing of George Floyd. She recorded the final minutes of Floyd’s life, showing him subdued and under police custody as an officer knelt on his neck while he pleaded for air. Authorities tried to sweep the incident under the rug, but the tragic sequence depicted in Frazier’s video was undeniable. The footage went viral, sparking racial justice protests around the world. With her footage gaining international media attention, Frazier found herself at the heart of the storm, forced to relive the worst day of her life with each news cycle.
The film then shifts focus to Diamond Reynolds, who experienced a world-shattering event that put her life on a parallel track with Frazier. In 2016, while out driving with her boyfriend Philando Castile and her four-year-old daughter, Reynolds livestreamed the chaotic aftermath of the police shooting of Castile during a traffic stop. If not for Reynolds’ courageous act of citizen journalism, Castile’s story would never have made national headlines.
#WhileBlack traces the global impact of these two smartphone videos — the social activism, sweeping justice reform, international protests — while centring on the emotional effects on the young women who shared them. Frazier and her family received threats, lived under protection, and were forced into hiding. And as a witness to history, she is forced to relive Floyd’s death by testifying in the trials of the officers charged with his murder. While Reynolds, frustrated by seeing YouTube and Netflix commodify her tragedy, takes legal action to have videos removed from the internet.
In an era when going viral is the ultimate mark of status and success, police brutality footage functions like a cheat code for capturing viewers’ attention. Shocking videos dominate mainstream news cycles and flood social media feeds, driving hyper-engagement. The film notes that Meta earned $16 billion in ad revenue in Q2 2020 — at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement — including millions from more than 50,000 ads using police brutality footage.
#WhileBlack offers a damning critique of the ruthless digital alchemy transforming Black pain into profit. Fussell and Holness craft a harrowing cautionary tale about the cost of going viral and the challenge of escaping the spotlight’s unflinching gaze. At the same time, the documentary serves as a powerful testament to how citizen journalism levels the playing field against a justice system that too often emboldens law enforcement to patrol Black and Brown communities with impunity.
Virality’s ultimate cruelty is how it denies traumatized people the right to put their worst days behind them. It’s nearly impossible to heal an emotional wound when the Band-Aid gets ripped off daily to feed the public spectacle. However, figures like Frazier and Reynolds refuse to let their trauma define them. #WhileBlack celebrates the defiant acts of citizen journalism that made them beacons of resilience and architects of a resistance movement. Though they bear the scars of past inequities, they’ve found solace in the steady lean towards the dawn of a more just tomorrow.
