FOR OUR CHILDREN unites maternal voices of resilience and solidarity in a poignant cinematic journey. This emotional documentary, spanning Oakland’s Fruitvale to the American South,  chronicles the powerful convergence of Wanda Johnson and Angela Williams, two Black mothers whose lives were forever altered by the scourge of police brutality against their sons.

Long before George Floyd’s killing and the BLM protests in 2020, Oscar Grant’s 2009 fateful encounter with law enforcement on a BART platform seeded public awareness and cultural consciousness of systemic racism and its discontents. Paying forward lessons learned and advocating against anti-Black violence in memory of her son, Oscar, Wanda holds space for Angela whose teen son, Ulysses, survives a police encounter in Troy, Alabama, living to tell his story.  Alongside a group of Black mothers across the country, the two women nourish a powerful network of community-led support, mutual aid, and healing.

The documentary features Gwen Carr (Eric Garner’s mother) Lesley McSpadden (Michael Brown’s mother), Geneva Reed-Veal (Sandra Bland’s mother), and many mothers who have never been highlighted by the media. At one of the gatherings, mothers are shown eating, praying and grieving together as they take time to repeat the names of their slain loved ones. Despite their losses, there is a sense of widespread solidarity and growing activism among those who declare they won’t give up the fight as they demand police reform.  The film also features civil rights attorney Ben Crump and BLM Co-Founder Alicia Garza.

FOR OUR CHILDREN (formerly "Black Mothers") won the 2023 Athena Festival Breakthrough Award, the 2023 Denton Black Film Festival Award, and the 2022 Sidewalk Festival's Best Black Lens Award; the film was also nominated for the 2024 Sing Sing Festival Award, organized by the Marshall Project, as well as the Best of the Best Awards in the Documentary, in 2022, at the Martha's Vineyard African-American Film Festival. FOR OUR CHILDREN has garnered critical media acclaim for its dedication to exposing injustices, elevating the political power of Black women, and inspiring societal change. Distributed by ARRAY Releasing, Ava DuVernay’s Peabody-winning collective, the film is streaming on NETFLIX.