Strong Island

Oscar-nominated documentary Strong Island chronicles how an investigation into the murder of a young Black man in 1992 became a deeply personal journey for the victim’s brother, filmmaker Yance Ford.

Twenty-four-year-old teacher William Ford was shot and killed following an altercation with a white mechanic, yet the killer was never charged. Yance Ford was motivated to make Strong Island after becoming dissatisfied with the way the murder was handled by the authorities.

Told in a restrained, straightforward style through formal interviews, Strong Island examines the details of the case, the lives of William Ford and the mechanic, nineteen-year-old Mark P. Reilly, Reilly’s claim of self-defence, and the reasons why the all-white Suffolk County, New York, grand jury chose not to indict Reilly. These elements are presented step by step in dramatic detail.

The film also functions as a memoir of sorts, exploring the long history of racism in America through the lens of Yance Ford’s working-class Black family. The Fords left the Jim Crow South in the 1960s but encountered a different form of prejudice and isolation in their new home on Long Island.