Genre
Synopsis
As major media networks displace household names in political journalism throughout 2025, Emmy Award Winning independent journalist Georgia Fort continues to fight for her place in the press pool. Looking back on her rise as the local and global source for reliable news coverage of highly publicized police-involved shootings in Minneapolis in 2020, the lessons learned provide a blueprint as others flood the independent landscape five years later. In the process, she recognizes that there's a story the public doesn't know: her own.
After losing her job as a news anchor because she and her husband were expecting a child, Georgia Fort builds an online media empire as an independent journalist, broadcasting to over 140K faithful followers and counting. As the biracial daughter of a white mother, and a Black father whose lives were plagued by the effects of racism, systemic violence, mental illness, poverty, and addiction. Georgia’s upbringing, marked with hardship, shapes a nuanced worldview that honors the humanity of those she encounters when covering a story and the justice she may never see in her own life. Her infant daughter died in the care of a babysitter when Georgia was only 19, and her brother is serving a life sentence. When taking in her stunning beauty under studio lighting, and composure in a hard hitting interview, audiences would never know what she’s survived or what she still carries. As she becomes a reliable news source for her community, and a sought after resource to global media during the highly publicized police-involved shootings in Minneapolis and the surrounding area during the global COVID-19 pandemic, the traumas of her past come full circle.
Top stories covered by Georgia and her platform become historical touch points in the police reform conversation in America, including the trials of Derek Chauvin, the former officer who killed George Floyd, and Kim Potter, the former officer who killed Daunte Wright. With minimal resources but a lot of determination and drive, Georgia emerges as a reliable and trusted voice with a pulse on breaking news and local policing, often including eye-witnesses and perspectives that mainstream media does not.
Five years later, the ongoing pressures of sustaining an independent journalism platform threaten to wipe out all that she’s built. As a new administration takes power, major news networks part ways with household names in political journalism joining the independent media landscape. Minnesota feels the continued weight of political violence with the murder of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, mass shootings, ICE raids, and military occupation. For Fort and residents of Minneapolis, the Déjà vu from 2020 is unrelenting.
Situating Georgia's story contextually between her backstory as a young journalist from a disadvantaged background, the historic role of independent journalism globally, and press freedom in the wake of the so called "rise of fascism," Changing the Narrative explores the tensions that exist when individuals and communities insist on agency in the story of their lives, and the narratives others tell about them.
Director Identity
Bio
Maya Washington is an award-winning narrative and documentary filmmaker (writer/director/producer), actress, writer, poet, creative director, and arts educator. Her award-winning film, "Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, " about her father Vikings Legend Gene Washington and the desegregation of college football aired on the Big Ten Network and is currently available on PBS platforms including PBS Documentaries Channel through Amazon Prime, Comcast, and iTunes. Her memoir, "Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team that Changed the Game," is an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best History. Her award winning-film "CLEAR", about a family reconnecting in the aftermath of wrongful conviction is available on the streaming platforms Argo and Kwelitv. As a freelance tv and film director, Maya directed episodes of the Fox series The Killer Next Door and History Channel’s "I Was There", and the PBS Kids series "Black SciGirls". Her narrative short, "White Space", (starring ABC Family Switched at Birth’s Ryan Lane) about a deaf performance poet aired on network television and was nominated for a Black Reel Award. Maya Washington’s commercial work includes Best Buy, Target, The National Society of Leadership and Success and others. Maya is a member of the Global Impact Producers Alliance (GIPA) and has brought films, books, and art experiences to audiences worldwide. She wrote the forthcoming discussion guide for American Documentary's film, "A New Kind of Wilderness" from director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, on POV in Fall 2025. Maya has served as a Jury member of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival and Board Member of FilmNorth. In 2025 Maya was a featured panelist at SXSW, Black Sports Business Symposium, and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
