
THE NEIGHBORHOOD – Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NYC)
Williamsburg, the Brooklyn neighborhood long home to Italian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Hasidic Jewish communities, is remade in this film by rising rents and an influx of young artists and musicians drawn to what has become a hub of hipster culture. Made by residents of the neighborhood, with interviews shot and edited by Qamile Sterna, the film puts longtime locals and newer arrivals in front of the camera to describe the same streets in very different terms: one generation's home turning into another's real estate opportunity. Housing and commercial prices climb through the runtime as a backdrop the interview subjects keep returning to, whether they are praising the neighborhood's new energy or worried about being priced out of it. There is no narrator steering the argument; the residents carry it themselves, old and young, describing a gentrification that arrived fast and changed who gets to stay.