Hoodie (2018)

Directed & Produced by Johnny Symons & Kenyon Symons-Rogers
Co-Directed/Produced by Daniel Chein
Edited by Gail Huddleson & Jon Ayon

Synopsis

Hoodie is a coming of age story about an African-American teenager as told in collaboration with his white gay filmmaker father. Kenyon, 16, explores his emerging Black masculinity through aspirations of becoming a rap star, a filmmaker, a barber and a football player. Growing up in rapidly gentrifying Oakland, he also confronts the discomfort and fear that his large male body triggers in the community, and negotiates racial profiling and the threat of police violence. Meanwhile, as his father pieces together home video footage revealing Kenyon’s physical transformation from baby to teenager, he struggles to understand the complex and unfamiliar realities his son faces as he becomes a Black man.