Acts of Reparation

co-directed with Selina Lewis Davidson

Two friends – one Black, one white – travel South to their ancestral lands to explore what reparations means to them. From kitchen tables to porches, lost cemeteries to discovered diaries, their journeys lead to unexpected opportunities that transform their friendship, families and communities.  Together they reclaim and reckon with their roots.

ACTS OF REPARATION is told in the first-person plural. Throughout the film, viewers are guided by a conversation between two old friends. With different histories – the enslaver and the enslaved, the colonizer and the colonized – Macky and Selina are determined to figure out together what is possible to transform relationships, communities and this country. While their long friendship provides a backdrop of trust and candor, there are conversations they have never shared about how race and its history shape their relationship and their lives.

This film is inspired by reparations projects emerging in communities around the country. It is our hope that ACTS OF REPARATION will move those already doing the work of repair to learn about the engagement of others, and motivate those new to the work to get involved.