Filmmaker Statement

Lauren and Keisha are like the girls I grew up alongside. They are Crystal and Christina and Leah and me walking home alone through the woods when we didn’t know the ice rink would be closed. They are the teens I now teach in arts programs throughout Chicago, holding down part-time jobs and warning each other which boys in their class are actually wolves. They are as wild as they are ambitious, as funny as they are skeptical, as resilient as they are vulnerable. So many women I’ve spoken with have stories like Lauren and Keisha’s - secrets that have never been spoken, harm that has never been healed. As America continues to struggle toward gender and racial justice, the experience of young Black women within these narratives is too often just a footnote. With A REAL ONE, I want to bring them and all their potential - all their flaws and humor and truth - to the forefront. As Lauren and Keisha stand on the cusp of adulthood, a chaotic world sprawling before them, they do what my girlfriends and me - and women the world over - have always known to do: lean on each other through thick and thicker.