“Intense, Mesmerizing & Heartbreaking,” DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN? Opens this Friday
“Human beings have a need to know: who we are, where we came from – essentially, what happened. We keep records, take photographs, tell stories, and build memorials. We try to keep track of our history. But sometimes there are missing pages. And sometimes there’s darkness.” Danielle White, Austin Chronicle
As you may have heard, quite a lot of people are pretty shaken up by the new essay doc by Travis Wilkerson, DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN? In it, Wilkerson, who is originally from Alabama, interrogates a true crime drama with the journalistic detail of the podcasts Serial or S-Town. But Wilkerson doesn’t have the same kind of distance from the subject, because the racist murderer at the core of the story was his own great-grandfather, whose standing in white society did not change one bit after the incident. In fact the whole matter seems to have vanished from the civic record entirely.
It is high drama, and more relevant now than ever. It’s the kind of film that you will walk around thinking about for days after, maybe longer.
DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN? opens Friday, April 20 at AFS Cinema. Tickets on sale here.
We’ll let the critics tell you the rest:
“A scorching and rigorous essay on memory and accountability… neither a profession of guilt nor a performance of virtue…Instead of consolation, Mr. Wilkerson offers commitment. Instead of idealism, honesty. ” – A.O. Scott, NY Times
“It’s an enormous story… He provides, in effect, a travelogue of the history of racism” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“…intense, mesmerizing, and heartbreaking… It’s hard not to experience Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? and not get shivers up your spine — from fear, from anger, and from the beauty of Wilkerson’s filmmaking.” – Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice
Here’s the trailer:
