A retro archival image of seven police officers in a staggered wearing gray and blue uniforms and helmets. One holds a baton as they advance as a group.

POWER

Directed by Yance Ford

Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: Power.

In the United States, police have been granted extraordinary power over our individual lives. The police determine who is suspicious and who ‘fits the description.’ They define the threats and decide how to respond. They demand obedience and carry the constant threat of violence. Thousands of these interactions play out in our cities and towns every day, according to real and perceived ideas of criminality and threats to social order—as decided by the police. Police make the abstract power of the state real.

Power traces the accumulation of money, the consolidation of political power, and the nearly unrestricted bipartisan support that has created the institution of policing as we know it. The film offers a visceral and immersive journey to demonstrate how we’ve arrived at this moment in history, from the slave patrols of the 1700’s and the first publicly funded police departments of the 1800’s to the uprisings of the 1960’s and 2020’s.

Part essay, part interview, and part archival collage, Power uses historical materials to illustrate our contemporary realities and examines urgent questions about a growing and largely unchecked authority—who is policed, who is protected, who gets to decide, and why.

A Netflix Documentary,
A Multitude Films Production,
In Association With Corvidae Media and Story Syndicate.

2024 / 86 MINS

About
the Team

A black man stares at the camera with a serious gaze - he wears a gray v-neck shirt and black jacket.

Yance Ford — Director, Producer, Writer
Yance is an Oscar-nominated director and producer based in New York City. His feature documentary film STRONG ISLAND premiered at Sundance in 2017 to critical acclaim winning a Special Jury Award for storytelling. The film went on to win the Gotham Award for Best Documentary and the Black Film Critics Circle Award for Best Doc. STRONG ISLAND was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards, where Ford made history as the first openly transgender director nominated for an Oscar. STRONG ISLAND went on to win the Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film and was nominated for a George Foster Peabody Award. At the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors, Ford became the first nominee ever to win for Best Direction, Best Debut and Best Feature. His work can be seen in the FX series PRIDE, the Netflix series TRIAL BY MEDIA, the Apple+ series THE ME YOU CAN’T SEE, the Showtime comedy WORK IN PROGRESS and the documentary THE COLOR OF CARE on The Smithsonian Channel. Ford was a staff writer in the HBO mini-room for the adaptation of the bestselling novel The Vanishing Half.

Yance is a former Series Producer at the PBS documentary anthology series POV where, during his tenure with the series, his curatorial work at POV garnered 5 Emmy Awards and 16 Emmy nominations. Ford is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and Sundance Institute Fellow and was named to Variety’s 10 Documakers to Watch and The Root 100. Ford was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019. His work has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Creative Capital, Cinereach, The Ford Foundation and others. Ford is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America and the Guild of Future Architects.

A black woman with short, curly blonde/brown hair stands in front of a dark gray background with her arms crossed. She smiles softly at the camera and wears a white blouse and necklace.

Netsanet Negussie — Producer
Netsanet is an award-winning documentary film & television producer with physical production experience overseeing all aspects of production from ideation and development to distribution. Netsanet’s documentary work is currently featured on HBO, Hulu, Max, Disney+, PBS, Mother Jones, and ABC Network. Her documentaries cover a wide array of topics and genres: from the criminal justice system and right-wing extremism to music documentaries, pop culture and history.

She produced POWER helmed by Oscar-nominated director Yance Ford; Through Our Eyes: Homefront (2021, HBO Max); I Am Not Going to Change 400 Years in Four (2020, Independent Lens); and produced the Emmy Award-winning primetime television series Soul of a Nation for ABC Network and streaming on Hulu. Netsanet was also a Fulbright Scholar in Germany where her research and reporting covers the convoluted matrix of European Union immigration policy, right-wing extremism, mis- and disinformation, and the carceral state.

A white man with blue eyes and fair skin stares at the camera. He has light blonde hair and wears a black and gray shirt with a tan jacket.

Ian Olds — Editor, Writer
Ian was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work as a director and editor of both narrative and documentary films. Films he is credited as both director and editor include the Iraq doc OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND (short-listed for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and winner of the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award), FIXER: THE TAKING OF AJMAL NAQSHBANDI (winner of top jury prizes at Tribeca and Madrid, acquired by HBO Documentary Films and nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism), and BURN COUNTRY (Winner Best Actor Award at the Tribeca Film Festival and released by Samuel Goldwyn Films). Other editing credits include SLOW MACHINE, directed by Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo (New York Film Festival); AS I LAY DYING, directed by James Franco (Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard); Hulu’s doc series CAPTIVE AUDIENCE; and CUL DE SAC, a suburban war story directed by Garrett Scott (Toronto International Film Festival, Arte-France).

A black man stands in front of a cement white door. He has gray/black hair and beard and wears a tan buttoned shirt.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe — Composer
Robert is an artist, curator, and composer who works primarily with, but not limited to voice and modular synthesizers for sound works in the realm of spontaneous music. Along with analog video synthesis works, he has produced an A/V proposal that has been a focus of live performance and installation/exhibition. The marriage of synthesis and the voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in performance and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular synthesis echoes the organic nature of vocal expression, which lends itself to Lowe’s aleatoric process. Lowe’s works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs.

Robert has also focused on composition for film and television, both in solo scoring and collaboration. Over the last several years, Robert has collaborated on projects or provided sound in a featured artist capacity for such films as END OF SUMMER, SICARIO, ARRIVAL, LAST AND FIRST MEN with Johann Johannsson, and IT COMES AT NIGHT with Brian Mcomber. Recently, Robert has scored CANDYMAN (MGM/Universal) for Nia DaCosta, THE COLOR OF CARE and POWER(Netflix) for Yance Ford, MASTER (Amazon) for Mariama Diallo, GRASSHOPPER REPUBLIC for Daniel McCabe and docuseries TELEMARKETERS (HBO). Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

An Asian woman sits on a chair with her hand resting on her face. She has long black hair and wears a blue tank top and black, wide framed glasses. She sits in front of a sunny window with the light casting a shadow behind her.

Julia C Lui — Director of Photography
Julia is a Providence-based artist, director and Emmy-nominated cinematographer seeking to promote diversity in front of and behind the lens. Her passion for visual storytelling started through her comics, evolving to filmmaking as a way to bring her illustrations to life. She strives for meaningful collaborations, opportunities for creativity, and healthy work environments on all her projects. Her narrative directorial debut DRIVING WHILE BLACK MAGIC screened at Urbanworld, Martha’s Vineyard African A778úmerican Film Festival, and the Montreal International Black Film Festival. Liu is the Director of Photography for POWER directed by Yance Ford, the cinematographer for the Emmy award-winning documentary STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE, and the Director of Photography and Executive Producer of the Netflix original WHITE HOT: THE RISE & FALL OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH. Liu is a camera operator in the International Cinematographers Guild and a graduate of Brown University.

Archivist
Jillian Bergman

Consulting Editor
Penelope Falk

Post-Production Supervisor
Grace Mendenhall

Assistant Editor
Dominic Stewart

Executive Producers
Anya Rous
Dan Cogan
Jon Bardin
Liz Garbus

Associate Producers
Jot Sahi
Wesley Harris
Ryah Aqel

Producers
Sweta Vohra
Jess Devaney

Coordinating Producer
Colleen Cassingham

Consulting Producers
Stuart Schrader
Lisa Remington

Additional Associate Producer
Jonathan Portee

Production Coordinators
Morgan Hulquist
Sarah Fineman
Julia Tinneny

A black and white photo of a crowd of police officers in the 1900s. Two police officers hold a white man in a chokehold and drag him.
A man with medium-tan skin and a goatee sits with his hands in his lap in front of a silvery background held up by two c-stands. A larger light shines toward the man.
A memorial for three children hangs on a fence. On the fence includes three stuffed animals, a drawing of an outline of a hand, and a drawing of three Black children with a red background.
White police officers sit in an educational environment in two rows, looking down as they write notes
A woman with medium-tan skin and curly black hair speaks to the interviewer, wearing a black leather jacket sitting in front of a multi-toned blue background.
A Black man with wired glasses and a mustache speaks to the interviewer while wearing a black and red hat, blue buttoned down shirt and a dark blue tie.
Surveillance footage of a group of police officers accosting a person, the people's bodies glowing in comparison to the grayscale of their environment.
A man with medium-tan skin and silver, short hair speaks to the interviewere - he is wearing a black sweater and white collar and sits in front of a blue, multi-toned background.
A vintage photo of two police officers standing in the street while a Black woman, wearing a coat and black hat, moves past the camera. An old-fashioned car is in motion in the background.
At night, a white shirtless man kneels in the middle of a street, both arms up. In the distance are dozens of police officers prepared to advance toward him.
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