A director of the Oscar-winning live action short “Two Distant Strangers” pleaded from the stage Sunday that viewers “not be indifferent” to the repeated police killings of Black people.
Travon Free made his appeal as he and co-director Martin Desmond Roe accepted the award for their powerful film. It features a Black cartoonist, played by rapper and actor Joey Bada$$, who gets trapped in a time loop, doomed to repeatedly relive a horrifying, deadly run-in with a police officer (Andrew Howard).
Free, who wore a suit with the names of victims of police killings, talked of the estimated 1,000 people killed each year in America by police, with the dead “disproportionately” Black.
He then quoted writer James Baldwin, who once said that the “most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to other people’s pain.”
Free added: “So I just ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don’t be indifferent to our pain.”
The win was shared by Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant and Utah Jazz guard Mike Conley, who were among several executive producers of the film with Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Free said backstage later that he was grateful for the recognition of a film “as potent and as serious as this.” It’s “amazing that we could be here today holding Oscars for a film about police brutality. It’s incredible,” he added.
Free said he was moved to do the film during Black Lives Matter protests “internalizing the pain of seeing so many Black people killed by the police” and thinking “this feels like living the worst version of Groundhog Day.”
The trailer for the film, currently streaming on Netflix, can be seen here:
