For Venida, For Kalief

Kalief Browder is known as the teenager who was sent to Rikers Island for allegedly stealing a backpack – perpetually awaiting a trial that never came. After three years of solitary confinement, in 2015 he committed suicide at age 22. A year later, Kalief’s mother, Venida, died from a broken heart. Leaving behind her personal collection of poems, the film presents Venida’s words as poetic cinema that showcases the full spectrum of everyday life for people of color in New York City; reveling in lyrical moments of Black and Brown joy and spirituality, as well as constant police surveillance and struggle. The film also lyrically weaves together the deeply personal emotions of Venida’s poems with the verité vignette scenes of activism and restorative justice reform that emerged in the aftermath of Kalief’s death. Featuring those that are inspired by Kalief in life (and in death) as they take part in the markers of his legacy — the naming of streets, the creation of scholarships and foundations, as well as city and statewide legal achievements, the film crescendos/expands to the larger struggle to permanently close Rikers Island, which ultimately confirms how powerful and everlasting Kalief Browder's legacy has truly become.