The Blood Is at the Doorstep

Blood is at the Doorstep was extremely well-received at its world premiere at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. It does a beautiful job of telling the story of the tragic killing of 31-year-old Dontre Hamilton by Milwaukee policeman. While the concept is very similar to Stranger Fruit (about the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO), Blood is at the Doorstep is a much better film. It is a less angry and less propagandistic film. It tries to tell the story in a way that presents an honest picture of the victim and which clearly documents the institutional racism involved in the police action and the criminal justice system. It is less about trying to reconstruct the crime and more about the reactions of the family and the movement that grew out of Dontre's death. It tries to show how the community reacted. The tone was less about accusations and more about trying to develop a space for healing the community following this terrible injustice. I hope this film is widely distributed, because more people need to see this take which really points in the direction that the movement for racial justice should be going.