Police Beat

Seven days and seven nights in the life of Z, an Afro-American policeman in Seattle. Z is a moralist, a Muslim and a republican and he takes his work seriously, even though he finds it hard to be authoritative in shorts and helmet, riding a bike. Z has a white girlfriend, who has gone on a trip with a male friend, and Z is obsessed by the idea that she could cheat on him. In the midst of patrolling, investigations and crimes, Z's interior monologues comment on the situations around him, transforming reality into a mirror image of his interior torment.

"Given that Charles Mudede had been writing a weekly column about local crime for several years, we decided to use police reports as the basis for a film. I especially wanted to capture the tone of his articles - the poetry, the humour, the philosophizing. It was such a refreshing take on crime, seen through African eyes, something 180 degrees from the crudity of Cops or the hardboiled eloquence of James Ellroy. Tonally, this was the opportunity to do something about crime that hadn't been done before." (R. Devor)