The film “Two Distant Strangers” just won for best live-action short at tonight’s weird socially-distanced Academy Awards out in Los Angeles:
#Oscars: #TwoDistantStrangers wins best live-action short film https://t.co/Ma5q4C2wJU pic.twitter.com/zPf3vEAS6J
— Variety (@Variety) April 26, 2021
The 29-minute film is about a New York City Black man who is stuck in a time loop where he ends up getting shot by a white police officer over and over again. Via Wikipedia:
In New York, Black graphic designer Carter James tries to get home to his dog, Jeter, the morning after a first date, only to find himself trapped in a time loop in which he is repeatedly confronted in the street by a white NYPD officer, Officer Merk. Merk wonders whether Carter is smoking a joint and wants to search his bag. Each encounter ends with Carter being killed by the police, then waking up in the bed of his date, Perri. Carter’s first death resembles the killing of Eric Garner (“I can’t breathe“) in 2014 and George Floyd in May 2020. (Travon Free wrote the script in July 2020.)[5] In one version of the loop, riot police burst into Perri’s apartment, mistaking it for a different apartment because the door number is hanging upside down, and shoot him there Breonna Taylor.
Travon Free, co-director of the film, used his acceptance speech to bash police officers:
“Today, the police will kill 3 people. And tomorrow, the police will kill 3 people. And the day after that, the police will kill 3 people. Because, on average, the police in America, every day kill 3 people which amounts to about 1000 people a year. And those people happen to be disproportionately Black people. You know, James Baldwin once said, ‘the most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to other people’s pain. So I just ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don’t be indifferent to our pain.”
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Watch here:
A guy you've never heard of just won an award in a category few care about (live action short). He took time out of his acceptance speech to call cops killers… without mentioning the people they killed were almost all armed at the time. That context actually matters. pic.twitter.com/ORXgYDGsyJ
— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) April 26, 2021
He also has the names of people “who have died at the hands of police” sewn into his suit jacket:
Duante Wright, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Rayshard Brooks, Stephon Clark … Oscar nominee Travon Free pays tribute to victims of police brutality with his #Oscars tuxedo, matching filmmaker Martin Desmond Roe, his partner on "Two Distant Strangers." pic.twitter.com/LyqtLO9njs
— Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) April 25, 2021
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