Netflix library has a few good shorts films and the two of the recent ones which will definitely catch everyone’s attention are: If Anything Happens I Love You and Cops and Robbers. While these are truly great in creativity, the messages they eventually pass, addressing two key social issues, make these even more special.
Directed by Arnon Manor and Timothy Ware-Hill, Cops and Robbers bring animation and social activism together within just a few minutes of runtime, and with the use of spoken word poetry – it highlights the issue of police brutality, racial injustice, oppression, and violence against black people in America.
The film is emotional to the core, as we can feel the pain of the people from a community that still bears the deep marks of slavery. The fact that the cases of racism, in many cases, were even normalized during the previous administration, makes it, even more of a threat to a democratic society as it is nothing but systemic racism.
You can watch ‘Cops and Robbers’ now on Netflix
Coming back to the film, it is based on a spoken word poetry video created by Timothy Ware-Hill in response to May 5, 2020, murder of Ahmaud Arbery. For those of you living outside America and not aware of the incident, Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old black man, was pursued by three armed white residents: Travis McMichael and his father Gregory, along with William “Roddie” Bryan, and later shot by Travis while jogging near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia.
While Ware-Hills had written and posted this poem Cops and Robbers in a video on his social media platform back in May 2020, Manon later collaborated with him along with as many as 30 artists and animators to give it a shape with powerful imagery. Here is what they say about the project.
Where to watch Cops and Robbers (2020)
