REVIEW: Two Distant Strangers [2020]

I think I just had the craziest, realist dream. You can’t read the synopsis for Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe‘s short film Two Distant Strangers and not think about The Obituary of Tunde Johnson—if you’ve seen it. Both utilize a time-loop scenario wherein their lead Black character is stuck in a never-ending cycle of police brutality always ending up with him shot dead. The difference between the two ends up being the fact that Free and Roe have less time to work with and thus less room to let…

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REVIEW: Buzkashi Boys [2012]

“Cheer for these champions” From crumbling bombed-out architectural shells, the black soot-covered faces of the public, and a national sport as rough and grotesque as Buzkashi’s horse polo with a dead goat, life in Afghanistan is quite easily one of the hardest, most brutal lives one can imagine. We sit here in America and let the media paint the entire country as our enemy—poverty stricken heathens who should be overjoyed by our intrusion upon them to instill some semblance of Westernization—and as a result never get to see how intrinsically…

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