As "Power of the Dream" (2024 release; 94 min.) opens, it is "August 27,2020" and the WNBA players refuse to play after Jacob Blake, yet another young Black male, is shot in the back by a white police officer. The documentary then goes back to the early days when the league was started in 1996. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.
Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary directed by Dawn Porter ("John Lewis: Good Trouble"). It is co-produced by several WNBA players, including Sue Bird. Here Porter looks back at the tumultuous year that was 2020, when the world as we knew stopped (due to COVID 19) and the police brutality on Blacks reached levels unimaginable, while at the same time a presidential and congressional elections were unfolding also in ways unimaginable. In the midst of it all, the players of the WNBA decide to use their platform to tell the world what they thought of it all. The most interesting aspect of it all is the Kelly Loeffler, majority owner of the Atlanta Dream and gifted a seat in the US Senate, decides to go all in on Trump and MAGA, to fight off the upstart campaign for that all-important US Senate seat by Rafael Warnock, a Black pastor. Let's just say this right here and now: "Power Of the Dream" is NOT a sports documentary. It is a political documentary about how WNBA players (of which most of them are Black) use their platform to broadcast their political views. As such this makes for a powerful documentary. It also is a stark reminder why insanely shocking the year 2020 turned out to be in so many ways.
"Power of the Dream" premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim. It started streaming on Amazon Prime a few weeks ago. The documentary is currently rated 100% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which feels a bit too generous to me. That said, if you are in the mood for a political documentary about the tumultuous year that was 2020, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.
