The Interrupters

In September 2009, bystanders filmed 16-year-old Derrion Albert being beaten to death close to his school in Chicago’s South Side neighborhood. At the time, Steve James was in Chicago filming The Interrupters, partially in the same neighborhoods where he had made his lauded documentary Hoop Dreams: districts where the predominately black population lives in poverty and must cope with rampant crime and ever-increasing violence.

Over a period of more than a year, James and his small crew followed three members of the Ceasefire organization, which takes to the streets to defuse explosive situations before people get hurt. These “violence interrupters” know exactly what they are dealing with: they know the culture of the local gangs inside out, speak the language of the hood, and above all have considerable powers of persuasion.

The dramas of a society in which violence is the tragic outcome of many complex factors, and in which even young children shoot at one another, play out right in front of his camera. It’s in this grim environment that the members of Ceasefire operate, with persistence and pragmatism, trying to offer a different life to disaffected youth.