Rampage

Director: George Gittoes, 15, 107min

On selected release

Gittoes’s documentary about a talented family of brothers from Miami’s bullet-strafed streets poses a fundamental question about the ethics of film-making. What truth can a documentarian hope to capture when the very act of making a film alters the reality that he is hoping to record? In this case, it’s possible that Gittoes’s camera exacerbated gang tensions, leading to the assassination of one of the brothers whose raw urban raps he had planned to make a film about. The possibility weighs heavily on Gittoes, to the extent that he takes the two younger brothers to New York and then Australia, out of harm’s way. Ostensibly they are trying to secure a record deal for the 14-year-old rapper Denzell, but you suspect that Gittoes just can’ t bear the thought of another bullet felling one of these bright, brilliant boys.