Part love letter, part detective story, SONS OF DETROIT is a film about America’s quintessential city, told through the lens of one unique family.

A white man raised as a cousin in a black Detroit family returns home after 20 years away to find the block gone and the family scattered. To piece together what happened, he searches out his cousin, Boo, recently home after 20 years in prison. Together, they set out to uncover what happened to their family, their block, and the golden age of 1970s Detroit that made them.

An investigation into the perils of silence, SONS OF DETROIT opens the door on nuanced, unflinching conversations about race—and especially about whiteness—rarely seen on film.

Sons of Detroit is directed by Jeremy Xido (The Bones, 2024), with producer Amanda Burr, and Executive Producers Lori Cheatle (Nanfu Wang’s The Night is Not Eternal), Joe Brewster, and Michèle Stephenson (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project), Editors Élia Gasull Balada, Kimberley Hassett, and Katharine Garrison, and music by underground Detroit music legend Waajeed.

With support from JustFilms Ford Foundation, Cinereach, the Guggenheim and Jerome Foundations, the Detroit Institute of Art, Reboot Studios, Scottish Documentary Institute, Gotham Pitch, DocNYC’s Only In NY, NYSCA, and the Jewish Film Institute.