The Filmmaker Fund

For Ahkeem

For Ahkeem presents a timely portrait of a North St Louis teenager as she navigates her senior year at an experimental, court-supervised high school. Launching out of the explosive events in Ferguson, MO, the film provides an intimate exploration of juvenile justice, education, and race in America. Fed up with the policies funneling young people out of the classroom and into his courtroom, Judge Jimmie Edwards rehabilitated a shuttered school in one of St. Louis’s most neglected neighborhoods and launched the Innovative Concept Academy (ICA)—an experimental public school administered by the criminal justice system as an alternative to incarceration. The film follows youth at a critical juncture in their lives when, given the chance to transcend their circumstances, they are forced to choose what kind of people they are going to become.