Ball Don't Lie

Brin Hill, Director

Writers (WGA):
Matt de la Peña (screenplay) &
Brin Hill (screenplay) ...

This is a quiet tour de force, a film that doesn't awaken you until it reaches its climax and then the lightening rod goes crazy.

Ball Don't Lie is the story of Sticky (Grayson Boucher), a 17 year old white boy who travels from one foster care home to another after suffering the trauma of the premature violent loss of his parental figure.

It is a story of a white boy making it in a black boy world because he has found basketball, a game that he excels at. But with all the bonding on the court, with all the seeming similarity in their life expectancy, the black and white world remain divided. It is this divide so beautifully articulated on the sands of Venice California beach(by the brilliant actor Harold Perrineau of the TV series Lost) that brings this film into notoriety and extraordinary excellence.

This is a film that uses real people, not just seasoned actors, and real places and even though in the main it feels like a trite, redo of a redo, by the end of the film you feel elevated to another plane of understanding of the world in which we live.

No small feat.

Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective