It Takes A Circus

Eighteen-year-old Aaliyah flies on aerial silks. Her 16-year-old cousin Bre twirls on hoops. They dream of escaping the violence that marred their young lives. Their possible ticket out is the after school program Trenton Circus Squad. Now that COVID-19 has changed everything, will the circus and girls’ dreams survive?

Screens live at 12:55 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 12

Q&A with filmmakers to follow


Filmmakers

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Zoe Chiriseri-Ramushu is a producer, filmmaker and multimedia journalist. She is currently producing her first two feature films in South Africa. One is in development, the other in pre-production. She’s in post-production for two New York-based short documentaries. She was nominated as the 2021 Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University, where she will give a report on the changes in the media landscape related to Black Lives Matter a year after the murder of George Floyd. She holds an undergraduate honors degree in Law and English and an MA, both from the University of the Witwatersrand. 

Sarah D. Collins is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles. She is researching how to create guidelines for newsrooms to “unpublish” obsolete content – such as stories about crimes that are now sealed by courts, reports about arrests that never led to charges, and factually inaccurate information.  Previously, she worked in Pennsylvania politics and as a researcher for USC Annenberg Dean Emeritus Geoffrey Cowan. Sarah earned her undergraduate degrees in broadcast journalism and political science from the University of Southern California and is a proud third-generation Angeleno.