TIFF 2020: Charles Officer and Saul Williams take a long day’s journey into Toronto’s night with Akilla’s Escape

The cycle of trauma and violence is a question I’ve always had on my mind in terms of Black men. It’s been in my body since I was young, this question being: What is the cost of a Black boy’s life? What does it take to escape this cycle? Why does it always have to cost so much? I wanted to tell the story of these questions in a way that gave a certain historical context to the politics of this violence.

What I set out to investigate for myself was the relationships between Black men and boys in our community. It was a challenge for me to try to manage the truth of the level of violence we experience alongside the growth that happens within us. These pockets of violence – which have been formed out of politically mandated elements, whether it be poverty, housing, or education – have been socially accepted as fact about Black boys.

Officer: I wrote the first draft of this film in 2010, which, with the arrest and extradition of Christopher Coke, was also a very politically charged time in Jamaica and, over time, it felt even more like this epic story that I wanted to tell. I wanted to play with form and with structure in order to make a film that was part origin story and part reckoning story. At the same time, I didn’t want to handle memory in a way that was at all nostalgic; I wanted to keep it present.

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