JANE ELLIOTT: AGAINST THE WORLD 

In 1968, the day after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., a third-grade teacher in a small Iowa town made a decision that would reverberate around the world. Jane Elliott divided her all-white class according to eye colour and gave her students a powerful, unforgettable experience of discrimination.

More than five decades later, Elliott remains one of the most uncompromising voices in the fight against racism and prejudice.

Jane Elliott Against the World explores the woman behind the groundbreaking “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, her extraordinary life and the controversy, resistance and personal cost that have accompanied her refusal to stay silent.The film brings together students who lived through her early classroom exercise and appeared in seminal documentaries, including The Eye of the Storm, to reckon with its impact and controversy. Voices like Killer Mike and Ibram X. Kendi widen the lens, interrogating what Elliott’s work reveals about complicity and the urgency of this moment.

With unprecedented access to her life, family, and archives, JANE ELLIOTT AGAINST THE WORLD tracks Elliott from a third-grade classroom to the heart of a national crisis. This is not a historical portrait. It is a challenge. Now at 90 Elliott has lived long enough to watch the past repeat, and she asks a final question: who carries the fight forward?

Provocative, challenging and startlingly relevant.

Director: Judd Ehrlich
Run Time: 99 mins