(Click here if viewing from outside the U.S.)
I’m FREE NOW, YOU ARE FREE
2020 | 15’ | Distributed by PBS POV Shorts Season 4 and Third World Newsreel.
I’m Free Now, You Are Free is a short documentary about the reunion and repair between Mike Africa Jr and his mother Debbie—a formerly incarcerated political prisoner of the MOVE9. In 1978, Debbie, then 8 months pregnant, and many other MOVE family members were arrested after an attack by the Philadelphia Police Department; born in a prison cell, Mike Africa Jr. spent just three days with his mother before guards wrenched him away, and they spent the next 40 years struggling for freedom and for each other. In 2018, Mike Africa Jr. successfully organized to have his parents released on parole. “I realized that I had never seen her feet before,” was a remark he made when he reflected on Debbie’s homecoming. This film meditates on Black family preservation as resistance against the brutal legacies of state sanctioned family separation.
Director/Editor: Ash Goh Hua
Producer: Arielle Knight
Creative Producer: Mike Africa Jr.
Consulting Producer: Sean Weiner
Development Producer: Malav Kanuga
Director of Photography: Jude Chehab
Additional Camera: Mike Africa Jr., Alia Africa, Lucas Gonzalez
Colorist: Lanee Bird
Sound Mix & Design: Samantha Skinner
Special thanks to Johanna Fernández
A film of Common Notions, with support from the Jacob Burns Creative Culture Fellowship, Chicken & Egg, The NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts, NeXt Doc’s FleX Fund, & IF/Then Shorts | Field of Vision.
Selected festivals:
2020 BlackStar Film Festival (World Premiere)
2020 Hamptons International Film Festival (in competition, Golden Starfish Award Nominee)
2020 TIDE Film Festival (Best Short Doc Award)
2021 Reel Love Fest (Special Jury Mention)
2021 Ann Arbor Film Festival (in competition)
2021 Sheffield DocFest (International Premiere)
2021 BAMcinemafest