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Told in a non-linear fashion, "Strong Island" is a portrait of upward mobility revealing a trap hidden underneath. Ford's parents moved to New York City as newlyweds, escaping the Jim Crow South. Ford's mother (a captivating interview subject) was a teacher who created a school up near Riker's Island to help ex-con women complete their education. Mr. Ford had dreams of being an engineer (Ford painstakingly lays out his father's draughtsman's equipment as Exhibit A) but in the meantime got a job as a subway conductor on the J Line. Once they started a family, they moved to the Long Island suburb Central Islip, populated by African-American civil servant homeowners. Ford's laying out of the setup and history of that residential area, the zoning laws that made it possible, the well-meaning intent, the economic pitfalls, is masterful. His mother hated it in Central Islip. As far as she was concerned, it was back to the segregation she thought she had escaped. "Everyone was black!" she exclaims in an interview. When you left your neighborhood you went into white territory where the rules were different. 

This is a documentary years in the making, and Ford's work as a producer on the TV series POV shows in his careful choice of framing and backgrounds. Intermittently, there are sequences where Ford's fingers place a family photo on a white background, straightening it, centering it. There's intimacy in the gesture, it's personal. This is not a collage of photos created by a computer. You sit with him as he shows you what he wants you to see. It's extremely effective.

Documentaries are often big on the information-dump, showing very little interest in how the story is told. In "Strong Island" the how is almost as important as the what. The centerpiece interviews with Ford's mother are a case in point. She is placed in medium shot in the center of the frame, colorful kitchen counters behind her. There's something raw and un-touched about these interviews, about Ford's approach. There are awkward moments where the screen suddenly fades to black before coming up again on the same interview, a solution to the challenges of editing a long monologue. But even the awkwardness pours into the overall mood. This is a devastated family circle, a family who has struggled to understand what happened, why a Grand Jury decided not to indict those many years ago, what exactly went down in that sketchy auto shop? 

Ford utilizes a couple of feints in storytelling, moments where a "sting" goes down on the audience, where you suddenly realize that the story you thought were listening to is not actually the whole story, that Ford held some details back. How you react to these "stings" is up to you. For me, the more I thought about it, the more I loved it. There were moments when suddenly the documentary was flooded with a kind of upsetting ambiguity. At one moment, after speaking with the investigator who handled the case back then, Ford breaks down in violent tears. There is some manipulation involved in the presentation of these "stings" but storytellers always manipulate reality. That's part of telling a story. Storytellers prioritize where they want their audience to focus. They tell us where to look. They lead us through the darkness. They withhold information if necessary. 

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