| Strong Island | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Yance Ford |
| Produced by | Joslyn Barnes Yance Ford |
| Cinematography | Alan Jacobsen |
| Edited by | Janus Billeskov Jansen |
| Music by | Hildur Guðnadóttir |
Production companies | Yanceville Films Louverture Films |
| Distributed by | Netflix |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 107 minutes |
Strong Island is an American 2017 true-crime documentary film directed by Yance Ford.
The film centers on the April 1992 murder of Ford's brother William, a 24-year-old African-American teacher in New York, who was killed by Mark P. Reilly, a 19-year-old white chop shop mechanic. [2] [3] An all-white grand jury in Suffolk County declined to indict his killer, who claimed self-defense. [4]
The film premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. [5] Worldwide rights were acquired by Netflix. [6] It received a Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary in 2017 [7] and was nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. [8] It was also nominated for an Emmy in Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking that year. [9]
It received generally positive reviews from critics. [10] [11] Inkoo Kang of TheWrap said the film "is a demanding, wrenching watch; an important work." [12] Bilge Ebiri of The Village Voice said the film is "truly special, especially as it moves towards its final act... the film is unflinching in its portrayal of their devastation after the loss of their eldest son." [13]
Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, and 3 Emmy Awards, with 14 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.
Bryan Fogel is an American film director, producer, author, playwright, speaker and human rights activist, best known for the 2017 documentary Icarus, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, known for directing and writing The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022).
David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author, and filmmaker. He is a former Newsweek senior editor, and has published in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and others. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBTQ topics.
Killer Films is a New York City-based independent film production company founded in 1995 by film producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. The company has produced many acclaimed independent films over the past two decades including Far From Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo, Kids, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, Swoon, I'm Not There, Kill Your Darlings, Still Alice and Carol. Killer Films also executive produced Todd Haynes' five episode HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, which went on to win five Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
The Square is a 2013 Egyptian-American documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which depicts the Egyptian Crisis until 2013, starting with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards. It also won three Emmy Awards at the 66th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, out of four for which it was nominated.
Ryan White is a documentary producer and director best known for his Netflix documentary film Pamela, a Love Story, Amazon Prime's Good Night Oppy, which won five Critics Choice Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, and his Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Keepers. White's previous films include the HBO movie The Case Against 8, which won Sundance's Directing Award and was nominated for two Emmys, the documentary film Ask Dr. Ruth, and Coded, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award.
Lana Wilson is an American filmmaker. She directed the feature documentaries After Tiller, The Departure, and Miss Americana, as well as the two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. The first two films were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.
Yance Ford is an African-American transgender producer and director.
Amanda Lipitz is an American director and producer of films and Broadway shows, including the documentary STEP. She's also a former voice actress, best known for voicing Zoey in the English localization of the Japanese anime series Mew Mew Power.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an American documentary filmmaker. She is known for producing and editing films on cultural and social issues. In 2018, she was invited to become a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Karim Amer is an Egyptian-American film producer and director. He worked on The Square (2013) and The Great Hack (2019); the former was the first Egyptian film to earn an Academy Award nomination and went on to win three Emmy Awards, while the latter got nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he produced and directed The Vow, an HBO documentary series about the self-improvement group, NXIVM. In 2022, he produced and directed Flight/Risk for Amazon Studios, revolving around whistleblowers at Boeing.
Diane Hope Weyermann was an American filmmaker who was the chief content officer of Participant Media, a film and television production company.
Fork Films was an American film production and television production company founded in 2007, by Abigail Disney and Gini Reticker. The company primarily produced documentary films focusing on social issues, and select narrative films.
