The intersection between Black Lives Matter and social media is explored to powerful effect in Jennifer Holness and Sidney Fussell’s documentary, receiving its world premiere at SXSW. While it concentrates on two cases in particular, #WhileBlack serves as a generational examination of how police brutality has been exposed more widely than ever thanks to the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and platforms like Facebook and TikTok, even while the corporations behind those platforms have profited from the human suffering they put on display.
One of the film’s chief topics is the most notorious case in recent years, the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, currently serving a 22-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Passerby Darnella Frazier, then only 17 years old, filmed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes even as Floyd repeatedly pleaded, “I can’t breathe!” The resulting footage
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