Two Black figures — a police officer and a university president — are interrogated by white state officials. At stake is their alleged complicity and collaboration with an oppressive, racist system; ultimately, the plans devised for the institutions they lead have, in the eyes of the State, fallen short. An essay film that probes every corner of its own cinematic language.
A radical experiment in disjunction. What happens when the image of a fictional police officer is haunted by the voice of a key figure in contemporary academia? Through a conceptual device that juxtaposes conflicting archives and dialogues, this short film dissects the stifling gears of structural racism. It is a hall of mirrors where language becomes a rhetorical trap and institutions reveal their machinery of domination. Nothing exposed here is strictly new, yet the way the editing shows these layers of authority is mind-blowing. (María Angélica Contreras)
