Charm City (2018)

One review that I read of this is that it is Baltimore after the Wire.  The updated version of drugs, violence, HIV, prostitution, and such in the Charm City.

In this documentary by Marilyn Ness the backdrop is Baltimore’s crisis of police/community relations,  and the faces of her subjects — dedicated law enforcement personnel, activists, political figures — may be pained, but their efforts to find a healing path forward are palpable and usually hopeful.

Filmed over three years of escalated violence, and shaded by a climate of deep mistrust between cops and people of color after the 2015 killing of Freddie Gray,  the film focuses on a handful of people working hard to repair things.

Police captain Monique has 16 years on the job, but it’s her traumatic Baltimore childhood, coming from a home of desperation, drugs, and death, that informs her empathetic ways in uniform. In the poor, neglected, drug-riddled Eastern District, a brawny local figure named Alex — once targeted by racist officers, now a hard-working protégé to revered neighborhood patriarch, Mr. C — channels his anger at the injustice he sees every day into street-level programs that help kids, and that interrupt tense street flare-ups before they lead to more homicide statistics. Young, solution-minded city councilman Brandon Scott, meanwhile, believes politics is where real change can occur.  it is eye opening to watch.