17 BLOCKS Portrait

Nine-year-old Emmanuel Durant, Jr. picked up a video camera in 1999 and started filming what any kid would: neighborhood ball games, visits to grandpa’s house, En Vogue sing-a-longs, the family cat. For over two decades, the camera recorded these ordinary moments of this Washington D.C. family, as well as a cycle of trauma all too familiar with neglected communities in America. Despite ample hardships, hope—like the grass growing out of the sidewalk cracks in front of their homes—finds a way.

Filmmaker Davy Rothbart, a name familiar from diverse storytelling fields (MEDORA, Found Magazine, This American Life), deftly pieces together, in collaboration with his subjects, an honest, loving and complex profile of the Sanford-Durants, who live just 17 blocks from the U.S. Capitol.