A new documentary on the life and career of civil rights attorney Ben Crump, Civil, will hit Netflix on Juneteenth.
Crump, who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, announced the film will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival June 12 before becoming available on the Netflix App a week later.
According to the site, Civil is
“an intimate vérité look following the life of maverick civil rights attorney Ben Crump as he challenges America to come to terms with what it owes his clients—including the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”The film is produced by Kenya Barris and directed by Nadia Hallgren, who was nominated for two Emmys for her Michelle Obama documentary Becoming. The film will also be one of the first shown at the 2022 American Black Film Festival
, which was held virtually last year but will return to Miami this year.“We are thrilled to open the festival with Civil, a timely documentary bringing light to issues of social justice and equity in America,” Nicole Friday, festival producer and president of ABFF Ventures LLC, said in a statement. “We’ve curated an entertaining and thought-provoking lineup of features, documentaries, and web series and I am so excited to share our content with a live audience again.”
Crump, who has been called Black America’s attorney general, is currently focused on the Buffalo supermarket shooting that left 10 Black people dead. The attorney said last week he plans to sue the gun manufacturer of the weapon that was used and the parents of the shooter, Payton Gendron.
“We absolutely intend on going after the gun manufacturers, the gun distributors, and anybody else who was an accomplice to this young, 18-year-old white supremacist,” Crump said.
Additionally, Crump is helping Black homeowners in a class-action racial discrimination lawsuit against Wells Fargo over the bank’s loan practices.