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The Interrupters

M
Steve James, 125 mins, USA, 2011, Digital Betacam. Source: Kartemquin Films. Courtesy: Kartemquin Films.

The Interrupters

Seventeen years after the outstanding documentary Hoop Dreams, director Steve James gifts audiences with another signature long-form observational film.

Chicago is a city drowning under the tide of youth crime - 2009 saw more casualties on Chicago streets than US military losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surmising that violence spreads like a disease, CeaseFire is an organisation working outside the law and

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lawmakers to interrupt violence - in the moment and on the street.

Ameena, Cobe and Eddie are 'violence interrupters'. Like their CeaseFire comrades, they come from gangland and prison royalty - as one interrupter points out, "We have over 500 years of prison time at this table. Man that's a lot of wisdom". With an unending belief in their communities, they listen and educate at flashpoint without judgment or fear.

James' unobtrusive camera offers an intimacy with the subjects and an immersive experience that is unshakable; The Interrupters is an absorbing investigation of a modern society shot at street level.

"It's as compelling as The Wire and it's all true" - Sight & Sound Magazine