Netflix has announced a new four-part documentary series with the Emmy-winning filmmaker behind HBO’s “The Sentence.”
On Jan. 29, the streaming service will roll out “We Are: The Brooklyn Saints” around the globe, an inside look at an inner-city youth football league in Brooklyn.
Directed and executive produced by Rudy Valdez, the project was set up by Imagine Documentaries, the prolific non-fiction arm of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment, in association with Amy Berg’s Disarming Films.
Using verité footage, the series follows the league geared toward boys aged 7-13 years old — where the Brooklyn Saints team serves as more than a sport, but a family and vehicle for opportunity.
The immersive series shows the community, chronicling the personal stories of the driven young athletes, as well as the support system of coaches and parents rallying behind them. Over the course of a season, we witness the Saints’ power on and off the field, as they celebrate victories and overcome losses, both personal and athletic.
“Growing up, I rarely saw people who looked like me as the heroes of their own stories. This deeply impacted me as a person, and now as a filmmaker,” Valdez says, adding that the film “was an opportunity to feature the lives of our main characters with agency and from their own perspective; rather than the one often assumed for them. This series exists for them and those who will watch it with the hope that a new generation will never have to wonder what it looks like to be the hero
of your own story.”
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Imagine Documentaries is based in New York and run by Justin Wilkes and Sara Bernstein.
