Producer
Sarah Dowland
Director
Julian Rubinstein
Production support
Doc Society Involvement
Docsoc helped with Production
THE HOLLY follows an attempted murder case in a historic Denver, Colorado community that provides an unexpected window into a neighborhood where much of the city’s violent crime takes place, nearly all of it gang-related. The defendant, 37-year-old Terrance Roberts, is a former Blood from “the Holly” who turned his life around and became a successful anti-gang activist. But during a peace rally in September 2013, Roberts shot a young gang member, leaving him paralyzed. Roberts, who faces life in prison, admits shooting Hasan Jones—who reminds him of his younger self—but says it was in self-defense. As Roberts awaits trial, a gang war explodes in the Holly, prompting emergency law enforcement funding and triggering a series of events that illuminate both the invisible forces at work in the community, and what happened on the day of the shooting. Roberts’s trial is the film’s climax.
Subjects
Society