New England Premiere
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 80 minutes
Director: Peter Nicks
Presented by:
Sprawling, immediate, and complex, Peter Nicks’s vérité documentary moves like a pulsing, timely thriller. In 2014, after over a decade of federal monitoring for misconduct and civil rights abuses, the Oakland Police Department hires Chief Sean Whent—a young, clear-eyed idealist—in hopes of bridging an historically tense divide between its officers and the community they serve. Whent’s intentions and calls for transparency are immediately met with enthusiasm, but as his tenure begins, the realities of his department’s scandal-plagued past coincide with fresh accusations of brutality and harassment. The Force captures everything; it hovers over Oakland’s evening skies and rides inside speeding police vehicles, granting viewers breathless firsthand access to some of law enforcement’s most dangerous jobs. With fly-on-the-wall intimacy, we see a department trapped in transition, desperate to shed its corrupt image but also challenged by an increasingly organized and urgent Black Lives Matter movement erupting right outside its doorstep.
—Sundance Film Festival guide
!["[A] forward-thinking feminist bent on the Riverdale school of neon Twin Peaks fetishism." – Katie Rife, AV Club
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Opens Friday! Jennifer Reeder's KNIVES AND SKIN premieres December 6–10 • Visit brattlefilm.org for showtimes & tickets (link in profile)
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“Neon-drenched cinematography, moody synthesizers, and acapella renditions of 80s pop hits are the foundations of this feminist teen noir that evokes the surreal dreamscape of Twin Peaks and the mean-girl existential malaise of Heathers. In Reeder’s uncanny exploration of communal trauma, where young women have magic powers and disheveled clowns have the ability to reanimate corpses, small-town mentality is presented as something bordering on psychosis.” – Tribeca Film Festival
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#KnivesAndSkin #JenniferReeder #MarikaEngelhardt #TimHopper #KateArrington #AudreyFrancis #JamesVincentMeredith #TyOlwin #GraceSmith #IreonRoach #RavenWhitley @IFCMidnight #HaveYouSeenCarolynHarper](https://www.brattlefilm.org/brattle/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)
Special Events Archive • Independent Film Festival Boston 2017
The Force
Buy Tickets
New England Premiere
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 80 minutes
Director: Peter Nicks
Presented by:
Sprawling, immediate, and complex, Peter Nicks’s vérité documentary moves like a pulsing, timely thriller. In 2014, after over a decade of federal monitoring for misconduct and civil rights abuses, the Oakland Police Department hires Chief Sean Whent—a young, clear-eyed idealist—in hopes of bridging an historically tense divide between its officers and the community they serve. Whent’s intentions and calls for transparency are immediately met with enthusiasm, but as his tenure begins, the realities of his department’s scandal-plagued past coincide with fresh accusations of brutality and harassment. The Force captures everything; it hovers over Oakland’s evening skies and rides inside speeding police vehicles, granting viewers breathless firsthand access to some of law enforcement’s most dangerous jobs. With fly-on-the-wall intimacy, we see a department trapped in transition, desperate to shed its corrupt image but also challenged by an increasingly organized and urgent Black Lives Matter movement erupting right outside its doorstep.
—Sundance Film Festival guide