The Shooting on Mole Street
Crime & Punishment
•
1h 29m
Directed by Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 1998 • 90 minutes
On March 1, 1996, 15-year-old Shafeeq Murrel was killed on the street in South Philadelphia — innocently caught in the crossfire between rival pairs of crack dealers out for revenge. Shafeeq’s murder was one of 435 in Philadelphia that year, and it was soon shelved as a cold case. Then, detectives David Baker and Julie Hill took it on— two middle-aged white cops working a Black neighborhood in their battered Plymouth Gran Fury.
Filmed like a taut police procedural, THE SHOOTING ON MOLE STREET chronicles the investigation, as Baker and Hill knock on doors, shake down dealers, and beg, threaten and cajole residents in an effort to get someone — anyone — to talk. Baker rejects any accusation of police racism in the unsolved murders of young Black men. Isn’t he out here trying to close the case? But racism is more complicated than intent.
Pat of Mosco Boucault’s “Police Investigations” series, THE SHOOTING ON MOLE STREET is a gripping documentary that follows Hill and Baker verité style, while capturing the complex dynamics of a community where selling drugs is seen as the only option for many young men.
Up Next in Crime & Punishment
-
El Sicario, Room 164
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi and Charles Bowden • Documentary • 2011 • 84 minutes
The term sicario goes back to Roman Palestine, where a Jewish sect, the Sicarii, used concealed daggers (sicae) in their murders of Romans and their supporters. In modern language, a sicario is a professional killer...
-
Where God is Not
Directed by Mehran Tamadon • Documentary • 2023 • 112 minutes
Taghi, Homa and Mazyar were arrested and interrogated by the Iranian regime. All three testify with their bodies, with their gestures and tell what it means to resist, what it means to break. Is there any hope that the torturer will o...
-
Beauty and the Dogs
Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania • Drama • With Mariam Al Ferjani, Ghanem Zrelli • 2017 • 100 minutes
When Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, is raped by police officers after leaving a party, she is propelled into a harrowing night in which she must fight for her rights even though justice lies on t...