Synopsis
From directors Adam Margolis and Jim St. Germain, Every Nine Hours is a modern-day exploration of skin color and gender and how they affect one's ability to participate in relationships and society.
In 2017, 987 people were shot and killed by police in America. One every nine hours. Black men were 3x more likely to be in that number than any other group of people.
Every Nine Hours stars Phillip Smithey (“Code Black,” “Grace and Frankie”), Elisabeth Ferrara (“Lethal Weapon”), Kahyun Kim (“American Gods”), Marcy Goldman (“Airplane!”) and legendary actor Danny Trejo (Machete, Predators).
The film is produced by the award-winning team of Ari Rutenberg and James Kicklighter (Angel of Anywhere, Desires of the Heart), co-produced by Jameelah Nuriddin. The director of photography is Lauren Guiteras, casting by Jaime Gallagher (The Great Illusion, Know Your Enemy), featuring a crew comprised of over 50% females and minorities.
- Producer
- James Kicklighter
- Writers
- Jim St. Germain, James Kicklighter, Adam Margolis, Ari Rutenberg
- Producers
- James Kicklighter, Ari Rutenberg, Adam Margolis, Jim St. Germain, Jameelah Nuriddin, Andrew Berman, Sara Rutenberg, Christine Handy
- Cinematographer
- Lauren Guiteras
- Production Designer
- Toryn Seabrooks
- Costume Designer
- Kris Deskins
- Editor
- James Kicklighter
- Composer
- Miriam Mayer
Videos
Press
“Every Nine Hours covers a lot of ground in an insightful way. It tackles and debates race and gender and how the two impact on how an individual is able to go about their day to day life. [Leaving] a long lasting impression after the final frame, it reinforces the shocking truth about race relations in America and how society has a long way to go to fully tackle fear and hatred. ★★★★”
“A beautifully acted and produced film. But even more interesting is that Every Nine Hours take yet another step, suggesting that racism isn't the only issue. It's people in general. ”
“A direct, dramatic, relevant, impactful, socially-conscious, and sobering statement about the concepts of race and gender in a contemporary world still greatly haunted by the specters of its past wrongs.”
“In a quietly powerful way, Every Nine Hours isn't just about the overt racism but the seemingly quieter, everyday biases and misperceptions, stereotypes and assumptions that can and do fuel our behaviors, institutions, detachments and, all too frequently, our apathy.”
Gallery
Director's Notes
I want to be clear up front: this isn’t my film. Every 9 Hours is Jim St. Germain’s directorial debut, and the most honest thing I can say about my role is that I helped him build the launch pad. I produced. I co-wrote. I edited. I am proud of every one of those credits. None of them are the same as being the author.
Jim and I started developing the film with Ari Rutenberg in the back half of 2017, the year Black Lives Matter moved from a hashtag to a national reckoning and the year #MeToo cracked Hollywood open from the inside. The two movements were happening on the same calendar, and they kept colliding. The question that lives in Every 9 Hours came out of those collisions: how do skin color and gender affect a person’s ability to participate in relationships, in a workplace, in a country? Not as theory. As Tuesday-morning lived experience.
The title is a statistic. In 2017, one Black man was killed by police in America every nine hours. That number is the engine of the film, but it isn’t the whole point. Jim wasn’t interested in making a hashtag. He was interested in making a piece of fiction about ordinary people, in ordinary apartments and conference rooms and kitchens, trying to navigate a country where the statistic exists. The cast he assembled, Philip Smithey, Elizabeth Ferrera, Kahyun Kim, and the legendary Danny Trejo, gave him exactly the textured, multi-ethnic, recognizably American ensemble the script needed.
What I learned producing this film is that there is a particular kind of work a producer does for a first-time director who is also the subject expert. Jim is a youth advocate, an author (A Stone of Hope), a Haitian American who came up in the foster care system, and a man who has spent his adult life in rooms where these conversations are had with consequence. My job was not to teach him about the subject. My job was to make sure he had the cast, the crew, the script structure, and the editorial latitude to say what he had come to say. We co-wrote so the screenplay could carry his voice into a craft form he was still learning. We co-directed (alongside Emmy winner Adam Margolis) so the set could move at speed without losing him. I edited so the rhythm of the final film matched the rhythm of his thinking.
The film came out in 2019, the year before George Floyd, the year before the largest racial-justice protests in American history. It feels older than four years. It feels older than its making. That’s the strange grace of working on something during a moment of active reckoning: by the time the world catches up, the film has already been on the shelf for a while, waiting.
I’m grateful Jim trusted me with the work. I’m grateful for what the film taught me about being useful in a room I am not the center of.
— James Kicklighter