A dramatic series that captures the reality of a true story of five teenagers who were convicted of a heinous charge but are actually innocent. In the spring of 1989, the five boys were arrested for rape, where they were questioned and forced to confess that charge even though they were not. Those who carried out the charge were a woman in Central Park.
There's a power to DuVernay's relative lack of interest in what made so many of the white people involved in this incident so abjectly horrible and wrong.
By the time it all wraps up Ava DuVernay's epic miniseries When They See Us delivers some of the filmmaker's most potent, unforgettable, and best work to date.
This is a work that wants viewers to see these people, and the fullness of their humanity, above everything else. What this means is a miniseries that's both profoundly rich and extraordinarily hard to watch.
The story itself is overwhelmingly powerful. But there are several key decisions DuVernay makes that turns When They See Us into one of the year's, if not the decade's best, programs.
Taken as a whole, there's a lot to recommend When They See Us. It does as much as it can to recast the gaze on Black and brown people, eliciting empathy and the desire for justice.
