Why I'm Optimistic About the Future of Film...
"The Critics" (But not the ones you think.)
People ask me all the time if there’s any reason to be optimistic about the future of film. The answer is yes, there is. And this is the story I usually tell:
On August 16, 2019, I had dinner with my wife’s grandmother and then returned to my brother-in-law’s apartment to pack my bags for my flight back to Los Angeles the next morning. Just before bed, I fired up ye olde Twitter machine as I too often do and this tweet from Al-Jazeera English about a group of kids in Kaduna state Nigeria rolled down my timeline:
I retweeted it with a request for someone to put me in touch with the kids in question (For clarity, I did not actually expect that anyone could or would.)
I woke up the next morning to the following tweet FROM THE KIDS THEMSELVES, The Critics, as they call themselves.
To be clear, I was not the only one who saw this and responded. Among those who did were Olivia Wilde, JJ Abrams, and Ava Duvernay (whose tweet I can’t find because she’s no longer on Twitter, like a responsible adult.)
Five days later, I had a Skype call with the Critics. Me in Los Angeles, them in Kaduna.
I remember two things specifically:
Their profuse apologies about the quality of the internet connection and the likelihood that they’d lose power at some point during the call, as though I’d judge them for those two things that were obviously wholly out of their control.
The comment (and I can’t even remember what it was in response to) “yes, we like Fincher’s work, but we find it a bit cold.”
Electricity and internet connectivity be damned, I was talking to film students, no different than the folks half a decade or more their senior who I talked to at USC, AFI, NYU, Columbia or any of the other places I speak from time to time as “the Black List guy.” They had seen everything at their disposal (in this case, mainly via a satellite dish that gave them access to films being broadcast out of the Emirates, if I remember correctly). They had opinions. And they were going to make movies informed by those opinions.
They did give themselves the name “the Critics” after all.
Fast forward roughly a year and the beginnings of a global pandemic: I hear from JJ Abrams that a shipment of film equipment will be arriving to the Critics imminently. Ever the uncle, I reached out to remind them to send a thank you note. The response: “Don’t worry. We’re doing something special.”
A few HOURS later - a year minus a day since our first Skype call - this dropped:
In the years since, the Critics have kept making short films (you can watch them all on their YouTube channel), and they've been collaborating with New Zealand documentarian Pietra Brettkelly and Oscar-nominated producer Chelsea Winstanley on a documentary about their lives. That film, CROCODILE, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday afternoon. (Tickets for all of their screenings sold out in fifteen minutes.)
And suffice it to say that they’ve been killing the red carpets and Q&As:
(These photos were shamelessly taken from Pietra’s Instagram and the Berlin Film Festival website.)
I’ve been watching all of this unfold from Los Angeles, on a slightly newer model phone than the one I was doomscrolling when I first connected with the Critics five and a half years ago.
I’ve spent twenty years arguing that extraordinary talent is everywhere and that the only thing separating the best stories in the world from an audience is access and opportunity.
It’s easy to say that. It’s another thing entirely to watch a group of kids who were making sci-fi movies on a smartphone in Kaduna, Nigeria walk a red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival and to reckon with the sheer improbability of it all. A Reuters team had to do a story on them. Al-Jazeera had to broadcast it and post it on Twitter. I had to be doomscrolling at the right moment on the right night in August 2019. JJ had to send that equipment. Pietra and Chelsea had to spend years of their lives making a documentary. That’s a lot of had-to’s for a group of kids whose talent, discipline, and work ethic were self-evidently extraordinary to everyone who encountered them.
But the Critics shouldn’t have had to be that extraordinary just to get a shot. Lord knows everyone else hasn’t had to be. They shouldn’t need a Reuters crew and a viral tweet and a chain of famous allies to reach an audience. I’m proud to be even a footnote in their story, but that’s all I am: a footnote, if that. This ain’t about me. It’s about what becomes possible when talented people are discovered, and how much talent we’re losing every day because we don’t have an infrastructure built to find talent anywhere further than an arms length from the people who are already in the system.
With all the love in the world for the Critics, for every them walking a red carpet in Berlin, there are a thousand kids just as talented in a thousand other cities who didn’t get that Al Jazeera story, that Skype call, that shipment of cameras. If we can build a world where the infrastructure exists so that they don't need a Franklin or a JJ or an Ava - just each other, their opinions about Fincher, and the unreasonable belief that making movies is something they're allowed to do - then we all have every reason to be optimistic.
This literally bought my girlfriend and I to tears. Amazing story, incredible outcome.
Nicely done brother.
What an amazing story. Love it so much.