‘It aches that he is no longer here’: the power of Kalief Browder’s late mother’s poetry

An Oshun shrine to Kalief Browder, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor and Layleen Polanco. Photograph: Kameron Davis

Premiering on the 10th anniversary of Kalief Browder’s death, the poetic and thought-provoking documentary For Venida, For Kalief transcends time to tell the story of Kalief through the poems written by his mother, Venida.

The film opens with tender scenes of a carnival in New York City during the reading of Venida’s poems by Jasmine Mans. “My heart aches for what he went through, headaches that I couldn’t prevent. It aches that he is no longer here. How often I relive the steps I took to find him hanging out of the back window of the second floor, just lifeless.”