Roll Red Roll(2018)
dir. Nancy Schwartzman
A phone in every hand. A hand over every mouth.
Where to watch: Prime Video; rent on Apple TV, AmazonLetterboxd ↗
In 2012, members of the beloved Steubenville, Ohio high school football team raped a sixteen-year-old girl at a pre-season party. Schwartzman rebuilds the night and its aftermath from the teens' own texts, tweets, and videos, from police interview footage, and from the work of crime blogger Alexandria Goddard and Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell. Then she follows a town as it closes ranks around its football heroes.
Why it’s here
The crime is only half of what this film is about. The rest is the audience: the kids, parents, and coaches who watched, filmed, laughed, or looked away. It's punk in Goddard, a Steubenville native who keeps posting the evidence while her own town sues her for it. It's pedagogical because it shows how complicity gets built out of small, ordinary choices, and what it costs to refuse them. Heavy watch. Preview it before you share it with a teen.
Where This Film Lives
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