''For Ahkeem'' is a 2017 documentary film directed by Landon Van Soest and Jeremy S. Levine. The film centers on a North

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

-based teenager, Daje Shelton, and her experience in school and in her personal relationships. ''For Ahkeem'' received positive critical reception and garnered awards from festivals such as the

Independent Film Festival Boston The Independent Film Festival Boston is a not for profit film festival in Boston, Massachusetts. History The Independent Film Festival Boston (also known as IFFBoston or IFFB) was created in 2003 by the non-profit organization the Independen ...

and the

Indie Memphis Film Festival Indie Memphis, located in Memphis, TN, is an arts organization that runs year-round programs that "inspire, encourage and promote independent films and filmmaking in Memphis."

Synopsis

The film centers on 17-year-old Daje and her boyfriend, Antonio. It shows a series of events that take place in Daje's life, including her being forced to switch to an alternative school for fighting in school and the birth of her son. The directors use Daje as a voice-over narrator in addition to filming her daily life. The film's title refers to the name of the child that she becomes pregnant with over the course of the film.

Production

''For Ahkeem'' was shot over a period of two years. It happened to overlap with the

shooting of Michael Brown On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown was accompanied by his 22-year-old male friend Dorian Johnson, who later stated that Brow ...

and the subsequent

Ferguson protests The Ferguson unrest (sometimes called the Ferguson uprising, Ferguson protests, or the Ferguson riots) were a series of protests and riots which began in Ferguson, Missouri on August 10, 2014, the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Bro ...

. The film was directed by Landon Van Soest and Jeremy S. Levine. The cinematography was done by Nicholas Weissman. It premiered at the 2017

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

Critical reception

Critics received ''For Ahkeem'' positively. The film has a score of 96% on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

. Peter Keough wrote for ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', "Levine and Van Soest relate Daje’s story with an impressionistic intimacy, catching her in key moments, sometimes with diaristic voice-over narration." David Ehrlich stated on

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

, "...the film effectively leverages the experience of its teenage heroine in order to illustrate that "bad kids" are a product of our failures, and not their own."

References

External links

* * 2017 films 2017 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about African Americans 2010s English-language films 2010s American films Films shot in St. Louis Films set in St. Louis English-language documentary films {{2010s-documentary-film-stub