Breaion King is a teacher. She’s the first person in her family to attend college or to get a Master’s degree and she’s determined to earn a PhD. Breaion is also a survivor of police brutality. In 2015 the police pulled her over and, with no provocation, threw her to the ground, beat her, and arrested her.
It’s a situation that is as sickening as it is common. And while the entire encounter was captured via police dashboard cameras, filmmaker Kate Davis delves deeper into Breaion’s personal story with the Academy Award-nominated short documentary, “Traffic Stop.”
“I never thought it would happen to me,” Breaion confesses in the short’s trailer — but she was all too aware of our culture’s mistreatment of and violence towards people of color. Her mother called Breaion her “beautiful chocolate baby.” “She was letting me know that in this world … people don’t see your skin as beautiful,” Breaion explains.
“You get over the physical,” she says of her experience with the police. However, she’s still having trouble moving past “the spiritual and the mental.”
“Traffic Stop” premieres on HBO February 19. The doc and the other 2018 Oscar-nominated shorts hit select theaters February 9.
