Rating: NR | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: April 25th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: POV
Director(s): Kelly Anderson & Jay Arthur Sterrenberg

Buy a candy bar, take a piss, and let’s go!

Everything you need to know about the Trump Administration today comes down to what Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball says towards the end of Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg’s Emergent City when the approval of his company’s rezoning plans start to look less and less likely. Of the many reasons for their eventual decision, the one he singled out to local news channels was the “current political environment.” If we interpret that statement as being made in good faith, we simply chalk it up as the face of a billion-dollar private equity conglomerate blaming a democratic state (New York) for hamstringing capitalist progress. What some of us knew then (circa 2020) and most are realizing now, however, entities like Kimball and Industry City only deal in bad faith.

Because “current political environment” isn’t actually about republican versus democrat. Not when you’re operating from their financial level with the power wielded from it. No, those three words are a euphemism for “democracy.” You see it early when Kimball explains how their property is uniquely positioned as a private venture to give the people what they want without bureaucratic red tape, failing to admit (although he knows it all too well) that removing said tape also removes those people from the equation. His hope is to dupe politicians into giving him what he needs to make his shareholders an astronomical windfall without any regard for collateral damage or keeping promises he never guaranteed in writing. If only those politicians didn’t rely upon the people to keep their jobs, he might have succeeded.

Enter Elon Musk and DOGE—an unelected hatchet man and his unsanctioned department shingle removing anyone who would dare put the public’s interest in front of corporate gains. It’s why they want to privatize the post office and defund public institutions like NPR and PBS. It’s why they gift governmental positions to compromised individuals that aren’t just “yes men,” but the very people benefiting financially from decisions in opposition to public consensus (just wait until you see where Kimball ends up). The MAGA sect brainwash their constituents into believing the same government programs that help them are actually corruptively helping “the other” more and therefore must be dismantled. And then, as their home is taken from medical debt, they continue to admire those “businessmen” for exploiting another loophole, refusing to acknowledge that loophole was them.

Everything is about money. That’s what private equity is. Status quo and stable profit are never enough. They need more. They need growth. And they will burn down the country to get it and simply move on to the next when the well runs dry. The people know this. The community leaders at the back of Brooklyn’s city council vote to let a company already earning close to 100 million dollars in profit a year to make billions instead know this. So, they fight to be heard. They fight to convince Council Member Carlos Menchaca that saying “No” might not get them what they want, but it still leaves the door open for negotiations later. Saying “Yes” only provides a façade of progress at the expense of real change. Because all those jobs that will be created will ultimately go to Manhattan transplants rather than Brooklyn locals. A “Yes” vote isn’t for community advancement. It’s for gentrification.

It’s a complex battle that ultimately comes down to a branding issue. Companies like Industry City (backed by an entity whose name becomes synonymous with Jared Kushner throughout Emergent City‘s runtime) understand this and use it to their advantage by selling consumers exactly what they wish for today without also explaining how they won’t be able to afford its benefits tomorrow. The big problem is educating the public about that disparity—opening their eyes to the propaganda that has taken over their entire existence via media outlets on television and the internet. We are in an era where our very lives are “pay to play” and we’re voluntarily pricing ourselves out because too many of us have chosen hate (“I’d rather no one play than let them have a turn”) over equality (“Let’s all play together”).

The access Anderson and Sterrenberg received for ten years is astounding because they get a little of everything. Kimball’s smug smile. Antoinette Martinez’s hand-shaking anger at organizations positioning themselves as public proxies despite ignoring the public. Menchaca’s genuine (naïve) desire to have a dialogue with Industry City and negotiate a compromise. And Industry City’s attorney’s bald-faced entitlement in the belief these “peasants” can’t do anything to stop the machine (knowing that, if they do somehow stop him, he’s another Trump presidency away from removing every last accountability check stop from his path). I’d argue this little microcosm of a political debate perfectly illustrates what’s happened to America during the twenty-first century. And even in its democratic victory comes the dawning realization that oligarchy already won.

You cannot deny that the informative and compelling footage the filmmakers have compiled is the main driving force here, but I must make note of the expert editing and structural organization of the whole with just the right amount of contextual exposition via newspaper headlines, archival broadcasts, and now-and-then superimpositions of the area in the 1930s, 60s, 00s, and today. Add the realization of what the people do want via one of the remaining state-owned waterfront areas and we even receive a bit of hope that all might not be lost yet. It takes films like this finding an audience and changing minds to keep that hope alive. And, if nothing else, that glimmer gave me a nice reprieve from the freight train that is America’s current constitutional crisis.

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Aerial view of Sunset Park’s industrial waterfront with graphic overlay highlighting zoning from EMERGENT CITY; credit: Eric Phillips-Horst.