LFF 2021: All These Sons
LFF 2021Director Joshua Altman and Bing Liu's All These Sons is a profound, poignant and much-needed discourse on the subject matter it quite expertly and touchingly produces. Much like Kim Longinotto's documentation of sexual abuse in Dreamcatcher from 2017, Altman and Liu's feature touches on a deep and often harrowing matter of gun violence that plagues the city of Chicago.
As someone who has visited and lived in Chicago over the last few years, this is a city that is incredibly proud of the working and blue-collar citizens that breathe life into its loins. Gun violence has and is a constantly well-documented issue that plagues the city, but instead of pointing fingers and stating facts without investigating the course, All These Sons does the one thing that so many investigatory pieces fail to do: speak to those who have been affected firsthand by this subject.
From the onset and throughout, Joshua Altman and Bing Liu's All These Sons is a profound success; the documentation of access and the theme of healing is consistently present. This is not a documentary to persecute and point fingers but to try to stop the cycle of violence and gang mentality, and interject conversation with understanding – an element that rides profound throughout the piece on the whole.
Documenting instances of groups that are trying to educate with workshops, the documentary sees individual arcs in personal one-on-one stories. How the camera lingers on the former to hear and understand the conversations provided are enlightening and often heartbreaking. The latter is equally as profound, hearing it first-hand from personal tragedy and the brutality of life that echoes within the trials and tribulations of trying to stabilise direction.
One such harrowing and utterly haunting moment comes in an arc surrounding one individual whose girlfriend suffers a miscarriage. The documentation is brutal and tough, but it is what that pregnancy means to the individuals as a testament to doing good and being put on the right track – suddenly derailed and back to the uncontrollable and spiralling gang violence that is the only escape. This humanisation of individual stories from the mouth of those affected crafts the stunning turn that All These Sons produces.
It is these conversations within All These Sons that offer an inspired and profound conversation that is sorely missed not only in cinema but within the world of social-political topics; to understand is to talk and to discuss, and while this may seem a long way off – actually fixing the issue – it is commendable to these men within their neighbourhoods and districts to combat this subject at the source through grassroots initiatives.
