Welcome to Cinema of Resistance, a semi-monthly column highlighting films of all genres and styles with one thing in common – a desire to shed light on, fight against, and/or stick it to authoritarian regimes, fascists, and bigots both in present day and historically. Genre film about violently killing Nazis, deep drama about finding meaning in suffering, important documentaries that provide hope, dystopian fantasies – it’s all here. In the face of an authoritarian regime, the time to resist is now. So, here at Cinapse, we’re celebrating the resistance.
Last week, I launched this column where I – or, sometimes, another Cinapse team member – plan to post roughly weekly about a piece of film that is directly resisting tyranny and oppression. As we explore these films, the format of these posts will often vary from informal discussions to deep dives and everything in-between. Some weeks we’ll have genre gems about the everyman facing vampiric LAPD task forces, like last week’s Night Patrol. Other entries could range from stories of revolutionary figures, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the subject of Todd Komarnicki’s late 2024 biopic Bonhoeffer, a film that I had in mind when conceiving of this column and is likely to appear here next week), Che Gueverra, or Gandhi. Of course, some of the big titles will show up like Tarantino’s Nazi-slaying neoclassic Inglorious Basterds, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and the complicated but brilliant adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s anti-totalitarian novel A Clockwork Orange. Some of these films will attack fascism and bigotry head on through documenting atrocities in non-fictional form, such as this week’s documentary, White Man Walking.
The press material on this fantastic documentary summarizes the film’s subject as following:
White Man Walking follows white filmmaker Rob Bliss as he walks across multiple states in Trump’s America wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. As Bliss journeys on foot toward Washington, D.C., he encounters armed Trump supporters, open hostility, and moments of profound tension—alongside rare, unexpected acts of kindness and solidarity from strangers who choose to walk beside him. The film becomes both a deeply personal reckoning and a broader exploration of America’s racial and ideological divides, asking why advocating for Black lives provokes such visceral anger, particularly in poor, rural white communities.
Somehow even more potent today than in the time immediately following the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, this documentary could be written off by some as a provocateur trying to make the American right look bad and disproportionately racist. To me, however, it’s an important and accurate look at the very American racism and xenophobia that continues to feed support for ICE killing citizens in the street and snatching up people just because of the color of their skin. Rob Bliss’s documented journey over miles and miles is easily as poignant to what the nation faces today as it was when he filmed it.
From the early moments of this film, we see unapologetic racism and white supremacy on screen. The expected “white lives matter”, “blue lives matter”, and “all lives matter” rhetoric is all there, but the outward statements that Black people “don’t matter” and that all Black people are “lazy” is right in your face from some of the first encounters that Bliss has. For most of us in 2026, this type of racism isn’t something we haven’t seen before. Beginning with Trump’s first term and escalating until this fever pitched moment we live in, the once latent bigotry of our racist uncles at our white Thanksgiving meals has gone so blatant and mainstream that the politicians and leaders of our nation are openly calling Somali people “garbage” and Supreme Court has literally okayed harassing Americans because of their skin color and/or accents. In the era directly following Floyd’s murder and the murders of others like Breonna Taylor – when Bliss walked across the country on behalf of the Black Lives Matter statement and movement – the blatant and violent rhetoric against Black and Brown people in this country was still amping up and growing to the levels where we are now.
Every film like this – from the rich tradition of powerful social justice documentarians like Michael Moore, Ava DuVernay, and Ken Burns – produces some key images that burn into your mind. The above picture represents one such scene for me. While the officer in this picture is polite and non-threatening, this particular confrontation serves as a stark reminder of how the system is rigged in such a way that law enforcement is powered by white supremacist beliefs and policies, whether those policies are carried out by people who are white, Black, brown, yellow, or any color. Additionally, it serves as a stark reminder of another truth – Bliss was treated with respect and dignity by this officer, but it’s likely that he’d have been treated different if the color of his skin was different.
For me, this is a central part of who I am and, moreso, who I strive to be. I am aware that I have privilege as a white man in the United States. Even more, I was raised middle class… in the suburbs… in a safe neighborhood (extremely safe, as it was a Mafia town, but that’s a story for a different day). I know that my interactions with law enforcement, Border Patrol, ICE, or any other such entity are likely to be less hostile than my Black and Brown friends and family. To me, that privilege, coupled with what I understand the words of the Christ I was brought up to believe in, calls me to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed – whether that be walking across the country, intervening on the street, or using my voice to highlight important art and stories.
The interviews and stories shared by the people Bliss meets on his journey are powerful, from the aforementioned stark, brazen racism of some to the hope shared by others – the homeless man who shares that the Black people are always the ones who help him and take care of him more than the white folk in his city, the Trump supporter who willingly walks alongside Bliss to try to build a bridge towards everyone getting along, the angry man whose wife aimed an AR-15 at Bliss from inside their home, the Buddhist monk that talked briefly of pilgrimage, the stereotypical looking country-fired white man working on his beat up car and explaining that Jesus was probably Black, the people on all sides of the fence. Even Bliss’s own story of this journey is very enlightening and powerful in and of itself.
White Man Walking releases on February 3rd and I highly recommend it to all reading this piece. If you find yourself on the opposite side of this discourse as I am, watch this with an open mind and see what you can take from it. If you are in the throes of the current fight against racism and fascism here or aboard, watch this to remember you are not alone. And, if you – like me – find yourself want to find more ways to fight alongside your fellow man to bring progress and change, take these words of activist Kiara Atika shared when speaking to Bliss as fuel for the fight:
You’re walking because Breonna Taylor can never walk again. You’re walking because George Floyd can never walk again. All these miles that you’re accumulating are miles that they can no longer walk because they were executed by police. Walk with their spirit and for their spirit.
Hate is real. Fascism is real. The time for fight for change is now. Let’s learn from and celebrate the Cinema of Resistance, as we regroup and push against the threat together as one.
Previous Issues and Further Recommended Reading:
