film mission

bearing witness is a short documentary film that traces the cyclical relationship between state violence and community resistance in Minneapolis. Through archival footage and contemporary testimony, the film situates the 2020 uprising not as an isolated rupture, but as part of a longer history of struggle that stretches back decades and continues into our current present.

Blending archival footage of protests and organizing from the 1960s onward with interviews from current Twin Cities residents, the film centers the voices of Black Minnesotans and other community members who have long confronted systems of policing, surveillance, and state power. Elders, youth, organizers, artists, and scholars serve as the film’s narrators, grounding the story in lived experience and collective memory. Their reflections reveal how resistance is practiced and inherited across generations.

The film moves across time, linking earlier movements for justice with the uprising that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the renewed mobilizations that emerged in response to the 2026 federal immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. These events echo earlier moments in the city’s history, reminding residents that cycles of state power and public resistance continue to shape life in Minneapolis. These fragments, paired with firsthand testimony, form a counter-archive that documents not only harm, but resilience and the ongoing work of remembering.

At its core, bearing witness asks what it means to document a city where history repeatedly returns. By tracing the patterns of repression and resistance that have shaped Minneapolis across generations, the film reflects on how communities remember, organize, and respond when confronted with the same forces again and again. It is an act of witnessing. And preserving histories that have too often been erased while honoring the people who continue to shape what comes next.