Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn (2020)

The topical HBO documentary film Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn examines the events surrounding the murder of Yusuf Hawkins, a Black American teenager who was killed by a group of white youths.

Yusuf, to whom Spike Lee’s 1991 film Jungle Fever is dedicated, was just 16 on August 23, 1989, when he and his friends were attacked by a mob of angry Italian youths in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in New York City, sparking protests and a deep racial divide.

Drawing on archival footage and interviews with, amongst others, former New York City mayor David Dinkins, American civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton, who led many of the protests, Yusuf’s family and friends who were actually there that day, as well as Joseph Fama, the man convicted of firing the shots that killed Hawkins, the documentary tries to uncover the impetus behind the tragedy, and highlight the systemic racism still existing today.

Nominated for a 2021 Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary, Storm Over Brooklyn has an 87% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Salon.com saying, “Voices past and present give Storm Over Brooklyn a piercing relevance in the here and now, whether by what they’re saying or what they represent.”