Robert Minervini brings together four stories about black life in this subtle but strikingly elegiac documentary
Black cinema has been galvanised at every level, from blockbuster to arthouse to documentary, by the social-justice drive of the last half-decade. What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? is another worthy addition to that growing canon – even if it splits its focus too much, to the detriment of the greater political impact it might have had.
Italian director Robert Minervini, whose documentaries have frequently focused on the
American south, divides his attention between four separate strands about African American lives in the summer of 2017: Titus Turner and Ronaldo King, young brothers running free in the edgelands; Judy Hill, an inspirationally foul-mouthed former drug addict, about to lose her New Orleans bar to gentrification; Mardi Gras “Indian chief” Kevin Goodman, keeping tradition breathing through his costumery; and Mississippi’s New
Black Panther party, taking to the streets to demand justice for a trio of suspicious killings they deem to be lynchings.