Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed series tomorrow, Tuesday, February 23: ADAMA
David Felix Sutcliffe’s look at the impact of a terrorism investigation on a teenager’s family made its debut on PBS’s WORLD Channel in 2011. It went on to screen at the LES Film Festival and the Apollo Theater’s WOW Festival.
Sutcliffe made his directorial debut with this project before teaming with acclaimed photojournalist Lyric R Cabral to make the Sundance award-winning (T)ERROR, which makes its broadcast debut tonight on PBS. In this mid-length, Sutcliffe profiles the titular Adama Bah, an African American Muslim teenage girl from Harlem who finds her life thrown in disarray after she is suspected of being an imminent security threat by the FBI at the age of sixteen. Held for six weeks, she is released with no charges filed against her, but during the investigation, the authorities uncover her father’s undocumented status as a Guinean immigrant and arrest him as well. Sutcliffe follows Adama after her release, while she is still monitored by the FBI with an ankle bracelet, and details the reasons for her arrest, stemming from an embrace of Islam and the adoption of the hijab in her teenage years. Demonstrating the devastating fallout of the dual arrests on the young woman and her family, the film remains a cautionary tale in a time of increasing xenophobia, religious intolerance, and fears of domestic terrorism.
what (not) to doc 