For Ahkeem poignantly unfolds with all the accouterments of a narrative film.

| Feb 27, 2020

Throughout the movie, there is one constant: Daje's smile. You can't help but want to keep rooting for her.

| Mar 21, 2018

"For Ahkeem" ... reminds white audiences that it is not enough to agree that black lives matter, but that it is also necessary to try and understand how black lives are lived.

| Mar 15, 2018

Excellent docu on teen's struggles in inner-city St. Louis.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Unadorned, urgent, [and] troublingly intimate.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 21, 2017

By simply documenting Deja's humanity, For Ahkeem offers a vivid example of the incontrovertible fact that black lives matter.

| Original Score: B | Dec 15, 2017

A stark look at institutionalized racism and a system actively working against you, For Ahkeem, uses the personal - a young woman's success and coming into her own- to complete a bigger, often somber picture.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 15, 2017

[For Ahkeem] is a compelling but often frustrating documentary, a microcosm of the struggles faced by many disadvantaged young people of color today.

| Dec 15, 2017

For Ahkeem is an essential insight into marginalized America.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 15, 2017

Van Soest and Levine were in production when Ferguson exploded over the police shooting of Michael Brown, and they're smart enough to keep those events in the background as a running reminder of what can happen to Black youth in the St. Louis area.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 15, 2017

For Ahkeem doesn't present anything new, but perhaps there's no need to: Its focus on one young woman struggling to graduate implicitly says that no matter how common the story, every person matters.

| Dec 15, 2017

There's a strong dose of anthropology in this documentary, as the filmmakers construct the small world in which Daje lives and interacts with young people like herself - all black, all poor, mostly fatherless.

| Dec 15, 2017

Levine and Van Soest are on top of their subjects with a startling familiarity and shoot in such a clean, unfiltered style that at times you question if they're working from a script or if their subjects are actors.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 1, 2017

For Ahkeem strikes a hopeful chord.

| Oct 19, 2017

A tenderly intimate, affecting documentary portrait ...

| Oct 19, 2017

The story that is told here, with such heartbreaking clarity, is an important one, but it is hard to watch.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 19, 2017

About as close as documentaries come to putting us inside the mind of someone who society easily overlooks.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 13, 2017

The movie isn't explicitly message heavy but by telling the story of Daje without reality show-type finagling, there is a clear message to see people beyond their stats, voting demographics and segments on cable news.

| Original Score: B | Oct 13, 2017

While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.

| Oct 12, 2017

A rich, inspiring, and at times infuriating evocation of Daje's inner life.

| Oct 11, 2017