The Ride

The Ride takes viewers on a personal and intense ride through the underbelly of the criminal injustice system, seen through the eyes of SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who is one of the nation’s few elected public defenders. Adachi represents a young African-American man who is charged with assaulting police officers after being falsely accused of a crime in a case with racial overtones. In this era of mass incarceration and police shootings of young African American men, the film grapples with the issues of racism, implicit bias and authority. What is not revealed in the film is that the accused is part of an ‘invisible minority’, that is often overlooked even in very diverse communities like the Bay Area.

Filmmaker in attendance