For Ahkeem

Challenges Facing African American Teenagers

This intimate coming of age story illuminates challenges that many black teenagers face in America today, and witnesses the strength, resilience, and determination it takes to survive.

One year before the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, a 17-year-old black girl in North St. Louis is expelled from her public high school for fighting. A judge places Daje Shelton into a court-supervised high school instead of a juvenile detention center, offering her one last chance to earn a diploma.

Over two years, Daje struggles to maintain focus in school, attends the funerals of friends killed around her, falls in love with a classmate named Antonio, and navigates a loving-but-tumultuous relationship with her mother. As Antonio is drawn into the criminal justice system and events in Ferguson seize the national spotlight, Daje learns she is pregnant and must contend with the reality of raising a young black boy.

Nominated for the Glasshutte Original Documentary Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Winner of Best Documentary at the Independent Film Festival of Boston and the Stockholm Film Festival.

"A stark look at institutionalized racism and a system actively working against you, FOR AHKEEM, uses the personal - a young woman's success and coming into her own- to complete a bigger, often somber picture." - Allyson Johnson, The Playlist