The New York Times recommends For Ahkeem as 1 of 12 films in its curtain raiser of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
"This up-close, slice-of-life documentary profiles Daje Shelton, an African-American teenager in north St. Louis struggling with school, family and motherhood. During the two years covered in the film, Daje and her friends see the news that Michael Brown has been killed by the police in nearby Ferguson."
No Film School also lists the film as one of the 10 movies they're excited to see.
"We don’t see many stories of young black girls on film, but when we do, they tend to be powerful. Think about how Beasts of the Southern Wild shook up the independent film world and beyond. That’s part of why we’re excited to check out For Ahkeem, which focuses on a 17-year-old student in North St. Louis, near Ferguson, Missouri, where fellow black teenager Michael Brown had been shot and killed by police during production on the film. The documentary, which has already screened at the prestigious Berlin International and HotDocs Film Festivals, looks to be an intimate coming-of-age story, but its sociopolitical backdrop gives the story gravity. The team behind the work also gives it real promise: Emmy award-winning directing team Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest, editor Lily Henderson (named to Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list last year), and 2016/2017 Sundance Creative Producers Fellow Iyabo Boyd. —Liz Nord"
Meanwhile Steve Koplan of Unseen Films calls For Ahkeem “an early favorite of the festival." Our U.S premiere is off to a strong start.
In the next two weeks after our Tribeca premiere, we'll be taking the film to Hot Docs in Toronto, the Florida Film Festival in Orlando, the Independent Film Festival Boston, and the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey. It's going to be a busy month!