A blistering meditation on the state of race in America, Italian director Roberto Minervini’s (The Other Side, Stop the Pounding Heart) exploratory documentary What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? chronicles the lives of black communities in the Southern states, where the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina remains acutely felt as police brutality claims lives with intolerable regularity.
Summer, 2017: a string of brutal police killings of young African American men has sent shockwaves throughout the country. A Black community in the American South tries to cope with the lingering effects of the past and navigate their place in a country that is not on their side. Meanwhile, the New Black Panther Party prepares for a large-scale protest against police brutality.
Following these threads, the film documents the lives of those who have been marginalised by the media and alienated by failing institutions, capturing the pressures of everyday existence for many black Americans, whilst also depicting moments of beauty, joy and radical togetherness.
