John Lewis: Good Trouble, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dawn Porter (Trapped, Gideon’s Army), will premiere for television Sunday, Sept. 27 at 9:00pm Eastern and Pacific on CNN. The documentary, an official selection of the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, explores the extraordinary life of the legendary civil rights activist and legislator, the now-late Rep. John R. Lewis.
“It was such an honor to create this film alongside Amy Entelis, Courtney Sexton, and Alex Hannibal, three women I admire so much. Spending a year filming with the Congressman was a thrilling experience that I will always treasure. I am so grateful that he was able to see the film before he passed, and to understand how much he was loved. I hope you will join me and get into ‘Good Trouble’ in his memory,” said director Dawn Porter.
As America’s summer of civil rights protests against police brutality continues, this CNN Films documentary explores Lewis’ life and life’s work of social justice. The primarily cinéma verité film uses contemporary interviews with Lewis’ sisters, son, and brothers; fellow civil rights ‘foot soldiers’ such as Xernona Clayton, Rep. James Clyburn, Rev. James Lawson, and Ambassador Andrew Young; lawmakers and friends Sen. Cory Booker, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner; as well as former President Bill and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and many others, to highlight Lewis’s personal milestones, his love of art and higher education, and his inestimable contributions to civil rights.
Rare archival footage from Lewis’ more than 60 years of social activism and legislative action yields new perspectives on historic events. Lewis himself, and others, movingly recount his now-legendary 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., for voting rights. The film also reflects on Lewis’ emotional commemoration of the 50th anniversary of that seminal event, accompanied by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
Throughout the film, Porter deftly weaves Lewis’s recollections in his own words: his happy rural Alabama childhood, surrounded by a large and loving family, his fateful first meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his horror at the lynching of Emmett Till that ignited the national conscience, and his accomplished legislative record. Porter also examines Lewis’s contentious political rivalry with fellow civil rights icon Julian Bond, his mentorship of his staff and new Congressional colleagues, and his marriage of partners with his beloved late wife, Lillian Miles Lewis.
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