The Hard Stop

The Hard Stop (2016)

A reflection on the 2011 killing of Mark Duggan, a young, black, British man, at the hands of London's Metropolitan Police. Duggan was pulled over early one morning, and minutes later, was shot dead. This event ignited the now-infamous Tottenham riots and made headlines around the globe, but, as so often happens, the issue soon dropped from the news. Picking up the story where the media left off, we're brought back to its roots in Duggan's neighbourhood, following his friends' fight for justice and search for meaning, while struggling against ongoing discrimination in their daily lives.

Date of release
2016-07-15
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Documentary, Crime
Director
George Amponsah

Casting

Interesting facts

The Hard Stop is a 2015 British documentary film, written and produced by George Amponsah and Dionne Walker, about the aftermath of the death of Mark Duggan, a young black man who lost his life at the hands of the Metropolitan Police in Tottenham, north London, in 2011 during a "hard stop" when officers "pulled out in front of Duggan's speeding cab, ready for confrontation" with the armed Duggan. A peaceful protest about the event escalated into several days of rioting that spread across London and beyond, and for a time made news headlines around the world.

Background

The film begins with Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote: "A riot is the language of the unheard", which Catherine Bray of Variety says "intelligently informs and underpins the entire pic" as it "grapples sincerely with the cultural context of a wave of riots that broke out across England in the summer of 2011, in the wake of the fatal police shooting of London resident Mark Duggan." Picking up the story in the period after media coverage of it waned,…

Marcus Knox-Hooke was accused of being the instigator of the 2011 riots and, though that charge was dropped, he was sentenced to 32 months' imprisonment following a prosecution for other offences. Producer Dionne Walker has said: "We started with Marcus but then he went to prison. There was a whole inquest… [then] you see in the film where it was a clear decision to follow Kurtis and his home life, which helped set the context of the film.

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