‘A Brother’s Whisper’ will be the closing film of the International African Diaspora Film Festival

Jacinto Taras Riddick’s “A Brother’s Whisper” will be the closing night film at this year’s New York African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF).

“A Brother’s Whisper,” which won this year’s Ja’Net Dubois Narrative Award at the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in California, tells the story of Solomon Bordeaux’s return to Fort Greene, Brooklyn after serving three tours of combat. in Iraq. Afghanistan wars.

Solomon (played by the film’s writer/director/producer Jacinto Taras Riddick) comes to stay with his younger brother, David (Che Ayende) and his wife, Leona (Lekethia Dalcoe). The two try to support Solomon and welcome him back to his old world and his old life, but Solomon suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder; besides, he is now looking at an old world that has been transformed.

Solomon’s old neighborhood is gentrifying, and the bonds he forged in the past with neighbors and friends may still be warm, but there are fewer. His brother informs him that now only 60% of the neighborhood is black, “and that number is rapidly decreasing,” he reports. “Yuppies were paying $2,500 a month for a studio apartment in Manhattan, how much do you think they’d be willing to pay for a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn?

“The landlords went upstairs, knocked on the door of a black tenant, doubled their rent, and when they couldn’t pay, they were kicked out.”

The loss of predominantly black neighborhoods in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy is just the beginning of Solomon’s troubles. The film shows how his anger at changed neighborhoods erupts in a place where interracial and gay couples are now dominant. There is the question of whether his PTSD is inflating his anger or if he is feeling hopeless and only expressing his fears through resentment.