Crown Heights, Matt Ruskin’s Sundance audience award winner based on the true story of a wrongful prison sentence, will hit theaters August 25, 2017. Amazon Studios and IFC Films are releasing.
The drama, written and directed by Ruskin and starring Lakeith Stanfield and Nnamdi Asomugha, won the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic features at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film also stars Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell and Amari Cheatom.
Crown Heights follows events that began in the spring of 1980, when a teenager is gunned down in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and police pressure a child witness to identify a suspect. As a result, Colin Warner (played by Stanfield), an 18-year-old kid from nearby Crown Heights, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Warner’s childhood friend Carl ‘KC’ King (Asomugha) devotes his life to fighting for Colin’s freedom, working on appeals, taking loans for lawyer fees and becoming a legal courier to learn the court system. Crown Heights was adapted by Ruskin from a This American Life segment.
The film is produced by Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Galazka and Matt Ruskin.
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