Directed by critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker Stacy Peralta (Dogtown Z-Boys – 2001, Riding Giants – 2004) and combining unprecedented access into the world of active gangs, the film offers a compelling, character-driven documentary narrative which chronicles the four decades-long cycle of destruction and despair that defines modern gang culture. The film traces the origins of a bloody, long feud and the social and political circumstances that give rise to the shocking war-zone reality of gang warfare and civil uprisings.
Executive Produced by Quincy Jones, NBA star Baron Davis and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Stephen Luczo, the film tells the story of the genesis of LA’s gang culture to the shocking reality of daily life in South L.A. Contemporary and former gang members offer their street-level testimony that provides the film with a stark portrait of modern-day gang life: the turf wars and territorialism, the inter-gang hierarchy and family structure, the rules of behavior, the culture of guns, death and dishonor.
Throughout the film ex-gang members, gang intervention experts, writers, activists and academics analyze many of the elements that contribute to this malaise, elements that can be found in big cities all over the world. Wherever there is a systematic erosion of identity through political, economic and social means, it fuels the self-perpetuating legacy of a minority’s self-hatred and violence turned inward. Add to this the combustible ingredients that are the disappearance of the African-American father in these families and an almost pervasive prison culture in which one out of every four black men in the US will be imprisoned at some point in his life, and you have the makings of troubled youth becoming hard core gang-bangers. In one of the most poignant sequences of the film, mothers who have lost their sons to gang related violence speak of their inability to save their children in what is very much an active war zone, by any definition.
We hear from current gang members themselves articulate their enduring dream of a better life. They provide the film with its ultimate statement: a message of hope and a cautionary tale of redemption aimed at saving the lives of a new generation of kids, not just in South LA but anywhere in the world that gang violence exists.