‘Finding Kendrick Johnson’ Director Jason Pollock To Helm New Investigative Documentary ‘The Case Of Korryn Gaines’

Valerie Complex
·2 min read
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Filmmaker Jason Pollock, director of the Stranger Fruit and Finding Kendrick Johnson documentaries, has announced the next case his team’s lens will be focused on: The Case of Korryn Gaines. Korryn’s family has given Pollock exclusive rights to develop both a feature documentary and narrative film about Korryn’s life and death.

Korryn Gaines was the victim of a 6-hour standoff in Baltimore which ended in her death in August of 2016. Her case immediately became worldwide news, and she became the face of the ‘Say Her Name’ movement at the time. Prior to Breonna Taylor’s death in 2020, Korryn Gaines had been the female face of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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“Our family is so grateful to Jason and his team for choosing my daughter’s case as his next movie project,” said Rhanda Dormeus, the mother of Korryn Gaines. “I absolutely loved Jason’s investigative work on “Stranger Fruit” and “Finding Kendrick Johnson”. We are so honored that he’s committed to spend his time fighting with us now for Korryn.”

Korryn’s story is very unique because she was live streaming on Facebook-live during the standoff pleading with the world to help save her life. She also had her baby son with her there. Unfortunately, the standoff ended with a SWAT Team storming her apartment and killing her in front of her son.

“Justice for Black women in our society always gets swept under the rug,” said Pollock. “Far too often the media will focus on the police killings of men. That’s why our team felt it is so important to fight for Korryn right now. We are going to change the discussion with this project and focus on a case that the media just used as a hashtag in 2016, and then quickly forgot.”

After fighting for two years, Korryn’s family won a decision in civil court by a Jury to receive $38 Million Dollars for what happened. In 2019, a judge unilaterally took the $38 Million away from the family. Then in 2020 after the family’s appeal, another judge reinstated the $38 million payment. However, to this day the family still has not received that payment and no criminal charges have been filed against anyone involved in her death.

Pre-Production has already begun on the feature documentary, The Case of Korryn Gaines. On top of producing the feature doc, the family has also given Pollock and his team exclusive permission to package the scripted version of Korryn’s case as well. Pollock and his team aim to have the film done by 2023.

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