You can safely let black and white film and modest sound designs unfold, slowly let the characters show who they are – give yourself time to think and wonder, because you notice the cameraman's own look is attentive – and he doesn't rush. Also, the editor is generous with time: It takes time before you are sure you are in New Orleans, time before someone's name is pronounced, and time before you notice this movie can show fear and anger – without becoming an angry movie .

What You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire? was recorded in 2017. Trump had just taken over the presidential office. For a while, there was nothing but the number of African Americans shot and killed by police who occupied parts of the community. The movie does not try to recreate the rage. Instead, it shows us how these fresh murders revive a fear that stretches back two hundred years in time, and that attention is not enough to put an end to oppression or alleviate the pain people have endured in a lifetime. "No justice
- no peace! ”

Racial violence

How close to reality are we experiencing here? Minervini has made the footage of her most famous films in communities marginalized by poverty, far out in the countryside of the American southern states. Stop the Pounding Heart (2013) brought us into a family of white fundamentalist Christians in Texas. It won awards, but was also discussed because it was believed that the romantic relationship between two young people was constructed for the sake of the film. What can a documentary allow before it turns into fiction?

Black men are killed by either the police or militant Ku Klux Klan members.

What You Gonna Do…? seems authentic and genuinely rooted in the reality the film conveys. It shows how people in the poorest African American neighborhoods in New Orleans are resisting the abuse of power by whites.

With the exception of two half-brothers, the main characters of the film are women. Especially we get to know Judy, who tries to save the bar she rents. The room Minervini gives the women and children is by no means crowded, but contains some older men who make up an undefined part of their lives – we see them helping to fix the bar, repair a bike and embroider a mardi-gras costume.

Judy's support group shares their pain and fear with each other. The trauma lies in their DNA, says Judy. That is the story of white colonialism, says another. At the same time, black men are being killed, by either the police or militant Ku Klux Klan members, sparking new fury. New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense attracts new members with an oath of allegiance and self-discipline. They organize because the threat of violence is real, and when a black man's severed head is placed on a porch, no one doubts that this is white racial violence. The Panthers visit the neighbors to the place where it happened, to offer armed protection.

If you've seen Minervinis The Other Side, where white paramilitary coaches in the forests of Louisiana complement What You Gonna Do…? this. In sum, Minervini with these films shows how war can break out between the poor and the impoverished, with lines drawn on the basis of racial differences.

Brutal upbringing conditions

In long scenes we get to know the two half-brothers. They cross the railway lines together, play in industrial areas and walk home in the crowded street just around the quarter from where someone was shot a few days earlier. The mother begs them not to take the scary road, and makes them repeat – again and again – that they will be home before the street lights come on. The oldest, who is 14, teaches the youngest at 10 how to deal with fear and defend himself. "Right now people don't fight, they prefer to shoot," the elder says. Switching may work if you are 10, but it will not work when you are 14.

No matter how beautiful and present the film is, or how much the research director has invested in: I wonder how much the characters in the film have been directed and how much are their own ideas, their own facts and mimics. Parts of the dialogue seem constructed, it sounds like people are talking to the camera instead of to each other – the fly-on-the-wall grip trembles on a jam-thin line. But like finished movie memories What You Gonna Do…?  about photojournalism in black and white from the 1950 century. The sound gives a natural impression – it's done some nice sound editing that you neither want nor should notice – and the film stays in you, character by character.

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