The series
Welcome to the community
In “The Community,” residents learn how to build relationships that dissolve their reliance on carceral systems. Through the cultivation of love-based experiments, characters grapple with how to respond to instances of harm and crisis by centering care over punishment, and forgiveness over prisons.
The project began after years of local & national community organizing that came face to face with a difficulty to imagine safe and healthy communities. In the spring of 2023, Writer/Director Sarah Oberholtzer facilitated an Abolitionist Writers Room of abolitionist creatives and community organizers to develop the world of the project. Together they created the specifics of what a community can look like which looks to one another to build safe & healthy communities.
While this anthology-format series is a work of speculative fiction, the real struggles of Black and low-income communities across the country— those facing environmental racism, state violence, and interpersonal harm—deeply influence the piece.
Thank you to our supporters at Black Public Media, Respair Production & Media, Media & Data Equity Lab, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for their belief in community-based problem solving and this project so far.
Through the cultivation of love-based experiments, each story features characters who grapple with how to respond to instances of harm and crisis.
Installments
The anthology format of the series allows us to actualize the project in stages, with the first film completed and the second currently in development.
The first film of the same name as the series, “We Call Each Other,” explores what happens when a life-changing theft takes place in The Community already facing man-made drought & environmental injustice (trailer here). Intercut with real-life interviews with family friends of director Sarah Oberholtzer, the film centers characters who learn how to build relationships with each other to address a criminal conflict.
As the second installment of the series, “We Need Each Other” aims to expand our belief in healthy communities. Through a coordinated community response to the turbulence of intimate partner violence, the film imagines characters who move through layers of domestic violence and its embodied effects. Click here to support the making of this next film!
Writer & director
Sarah Oberholtzer
is a filmmaker and producer invested in telling stories that allow audiences to imagine alternative futures that support BIPOC communities. With past experience as Story Producer for Respair Production and Media’s “1 Million Experiments” and Associate Producer for Essence McDowell’s “Invisible Giants,” they are currently the Writer/Director/Co-Producer of a short film series entitled “We Call Each Other.”
Festivals such as the Trans Stellar Film Festival, Imagine This Women’s International Film Fest and The Bush Films have all featured their documentary short “Reimagining Tomorrow.” Their piece “Love Letter to Chicago’s Black Womxn,” made in collaboration with the national Black Girl Freedom Fund, screened at the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) in the Bay Area. Sarah received a bachelor’s degree in Radio, Television + Film from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
The series features stories that hope to honor the labor of women and femmes who I see transform their neighborhoods every day.
Director’s statement
This project has been a labor of love for over 4 years. The project grew out of my community organizing work, knocking on doors and holding conversations with community members about many campaigns advocating for a divestment from policing/military strategies and an investment in people-centered infrastructure instead. This work advocated for resources like mental healthcare, affordable housing, youth jobs, and family services. Basically, I realized that people largely don’t disagree with these efforts. Many literally can’t imagine that it’s possible for their communities. This project aims to do just that: imagine a sustainable community that centers care and forgiveness over containment and punishment.
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