For Ahkeem

There is a fascinating impulsiveness to the production of this story, especially as it essentially drops viewers into the world of Daje, and then has us follow her for months.

It’s a sort of bad-luck situation most documentarians secretly dream of, but to their credit, For Ahkeem’s co-directors don’t exploit the situation, merely letting their cameras continue to capture Daje’s ever-dire situation.

A tenderly intimate, affecting documentary portrait.

The vicious-cycle narrative is familiar, but For Ahkeem comes uncomfortably close at times to crossing the line between shining a light on a problem and exploiting one, despite the filmmakers’ good intentions.

An illuminating film about poverty that one hopes can be a call for action even if the film itself doesn’t directly encourage advocacy, it’s clear that hashtags and temporary fixes aren’t enough to change Ahkeem’s life.

Levine and Van Soest (who are both white) deserve credit for eliding or treating obliquely a number of seemingly obvious narrative beats.

While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.