Film
Baltimore Rising
Baltimore Rising documents the immediate aftermath of Freddie Gray's death in police custody, capturing the city's fractured response through interviews with activists, community leaders, gang members, and police. It's urgent, intimate, and deliberately multi-perspectival—refusing easy answers while insisting on human complexity even in moments of maximum pain and anger.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a documentary that lets Baltimore's activists, officers and street-level community figures speak for themselves, with the patient, close-up attention of a film made from inside the moment.
Skip it if you come to documentaries for a clear argument or a tidy narrator guiding you through events, since this one trusts raw footage and loose threads and rarely stops to explain itself.
What it asks of you: It runs about ninety-three minutes and moves between many people across a tense stretch of weeks, so it rewards steady attention more than a single tight throughline.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
13th2016
Ava DuVernay's essay on mass incarceration and systemic racism in America. It contextualizes what Baltimore Rising shows you in the moment, tracing the historical roots of the system that created Freddie Gray's death.
But Dense with statistics and archival footage. Some viewers find the argumentative structure didactic rather than cinematic.
9to5: The Story of a Movement2020
Follows Black Lives Matter activists across multiple cities in the years after Ferguson. Like Baltimore Rising, it centers the organizers themselves, showing the exhausting work of protest beyond the headline moment.
But Observational style means it's sometimes slow. There's no external narrator to guide you toward conclusions.
MLK/FBI2020
Sam Pollard examines COINTELPRO and the government's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. Essential viewing about how power moves against dissent—historically and structurally.
But Archival, deliberately paced. Not a conventional biography. Requires patience with visual repetition.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Baltimore Rising
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Gomorra: La Serie2014
Both show how geography, power, and survival create moral choices that defy simple categorization. Both trust viewers to sit with complexity.
Italian crime series set in Naples, following organized crime networks through the city's neighborhoods. Structurally obsessed with how institutions—criminal and otherwise—shape individual lives and choices. The parallel to Baltimore Rising is in its refusal to separate 'good guys' from 'bad guys,' showing instead how systems recruit and destroy people.
But Brutal, morally ambiguous. Subtitled. Five seasons is a commitment, and some episodes move slowly through daily life.
More like this (8)
Whose Streets?2017
Shot entirely by Ferguson protesters during the uprising following Michael Brown's death. Raw, first-person, unmediated. You see the streets and the people as they experience it.
But Deliberately chaotic and intimate. The handheld aesthetic and multiple perspectives can feel disorienting.
Selma2014
Ava DuVernay's dramatization of the 1965 voting rights march. Shows how protest works, how repression operates, and why ordinary people risked everything.
But A prestige drama, not a documentary. Some viewers find it slightly sanitized compared to the actual brutality.
I Am Not Your Negro2017
Raoul Peck uses James Baldwin's unpublished manuscript to examine American racism and Black life. It's a work of essayistic cinema—thinking on screen.
But Literary and intellectual. Not a narrative film. Requires real attention and sits with difficult ideas.
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-19922017
Documentary about the LA uprising following Rodney King's beating. Covers the decade leading up to it, showing how structural inequity becomes explosive.
But Decades-old footage is grainy. The pacing is measured rather than urgent.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening2018
RaMell Ross's poetic documentary about rural Alabama and Black life in America. Not about protest, but about resilience, community, and beauty amid systemic pressure.
But Deliberately abstract and impressionistic. Some find it too oblique to connect with emotionally.
American: The Bill Hicks Story2010
A documentary about a dissenting voice and systemic erasure. Shows how power silences critique through channels both obvious and subtle.
But About comedy and media rather than police violence. Indirect connection to your core interest.
The Two Escobars2010
Like Baltimore Rising, it captures a moment where a city's multiple realities—corruption, hope, entertainment, survival—collide in the same space, told through intimate human stories rather than abstract analysis.
Documentary about Colombian soccer and the drug trade, focusing on two men named Escobar. It's ostensibly about sports and crime, but it's really about how violence echoes through a city and how people navigate living inside it.
But The connection to Baltimore might feel distant. It's a specific historical story, not a polemic.
It's Such a Beautiful Day2012
Both insist that individual consciousness and dignity matter in the face of forces that want to treat people as abstractions or problems to be managed.
Don Hertzfeldt's animated film about mental illness, mortality, and meaning. A completely different register from Baltimore Rising, but it shares something profound: how to hold onto humanity when systems and circumstances threaten to erase it.
But Animated stick figures. Begins funny and becomes harrowing. Operates through abstraction and memory rather than documentary specificity.
People
Cast
- Devin AllenHimself
- Genard Shadow BarrHimself
Elijah CummingsHimself
Kevin DavisHimself- Makayla Gilliam-PriceHerself
- Sherrilyn IfillHerself
- Adam JacksonHimself
- Dayvon LoveHimself
- William 'Billy' Murphy Jr.Himself
- Stephanie Rawlings-BlakeHerself
- Kwame RoseHimself
- Melvin RussellHimself
Directing
- Sonja SohnDirector