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Mary Posatko
filmmaker and professor
Distributed by Alexander Street.
ALL FALL DOWN
Baltimore, 1972: Henry Selhorst, father of thirteen children, is murdered blocks from his home; three young men are arrested for the crime, then acquitted. In 2008, as Obama is elected President, his granddaughter Emily Topper tries to find out what really happened that fatal day. 'Racism', people said back then. But is that really all there was to it? 'All Fall Down' is a deeply personal detective story from a city where the relationship between black and white has a troubled history - and where the truth is nonetheless never black and white. Although Emily meets the policeman first on the crime scene, and actually manages to seek out the men accused of the murder, every new testimonial only adds another perspective on the case. And her attempt to piece the puzzle together into a coherent picture is not made easier by the years that have passed, or by the fact that much has disappeared or been suppressed in the fog of collective memory. In the meantime, 'All Fall Down' emerges as a phantom portrait of a missing man that Emily herself never really got to know - and of very special family. - CPH:DOX
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WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
"riveting"
-- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
"The personal is political in this fascinating documentary by Emily Topper and Mary Posatko that looks at one family tragedy through the lens of white guilt, unconscious racism, and a period of great social upheaval in Baltimore."
"Best film of 2014."
-- Max Weiss, Baltimore Magazine
"The best documentaries—like Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans or Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man—unfold with the narrative tension of the most outstanding fictional dramas. In All Fall Down, directors Emily Topper and Mary Posatko seem to have internalized this principle, slowly teasing out the details of their story so that the audience’s sympathies and understanding of events shift as the film moves forward."
--Evan Serpick, Baltimore City Paper