Jo Addy's Awards Season Picks: A Love Story for Latasha

‘I just couldn’t believe there wasn’t more information about Latasha – there was no way for me to really get a sense of who she was. All that was really accessible was details about those last moments, about that trauma in her death.’

It was moving to LA in 2017, the 25th anniversary of the LA uprising, that first inspired filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison to revisit the story of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old girl who was fatally shot in a convenience store after being racially profiled. Allison saw it as an opportunity to reframe Latasha’s life outside of the trauma of her death, to celebrate the fullness of her existence – and in doing so, to decolonise the idea of ‘needing to see the actual trauma to connect to the death of a Black person – to connect to the life of a Black person’.

Watch our video as Allison talks to writer Lola Adesioye about giving Black girls and women space and a voice, using visual language to create a spiritual archive, and her experience as a Black woman creative.