– The thing that the movie tells you the minute you sit down to watch it is, like, This film is comprised of two years of police body camera footage. I think that the the movie-ness of this thing is what I found to be the most unsettling. This is a very deeply, profoundly watchable movie. I know how to watch this movie — – Yes, yes, yes, yes. – I have been trained by the movies to watch the film. – The film — the film sort of watches you watching it, right? And sort of can anticipate all these things. But why is it distressing, its watchability, to you? – Because it’s in complete alignment with the police. – Yeah. Yeah. – The police — – Yeah. I mean, you know, because the question with found footage for me — my sticking point has always been who is the editor here? Who has brought these images to us? – You want to know who has assembled it. Who has touched it? Who has cut it? – There’s an ethics that you have to deploy in the use of these materials. – Yes. And I think that the queasiness, the discomfort, that attends the watching of this film comes from I think the filmmaker’s really deep conviction that they are doing something subversive with this. And I, and I actually don’t know if I — I don’t know, because I do think that one of the reasons the film has had this kind of purchase on the imagination and, and seemingly, at least where I’m sitting, galvanized so many people is because what’s actually subversive is not that they’re reclaiming and retaking this footage and putting it to other ends. It’s that it’s humanizing the police. That’s what feels subversive to a lot of these viewers, right? But they’re actually these really nice guys. And I’m watching the police come and, you know, walk up to these group of children and — oh my gosh, they’re sympathizing with them. You know they seem to be on the side of the children and the side of the community. But it’s, it’s I don’t know, it’s, it’s — I, the film does not seem to be entirely in control of what it seems to be unleashing. – No, no, no, no.
