Imperial Dreams

“You can’t splash back into the projects, you gotta slide in,” narrates 21-year-old Bambi Jones as he walks through the Watts neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Bambi, convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, has just been released from jail, but he has no plans of returning to his former lifestyle. In prison, Bambi diligently honed his writing, and he even published a short story in the literary journal McSweeney’s. Now Bambi has aspirations of acquiring a book deal. Yet dreams are hard to achieve in his crime-ridden neighborhood. Bambi desperately needs money to care for his son Day, whose mother Samaara is also in prison for a non-violent crime. And despite Bambi’s intentions to stay clean, his slimy uncle Shrimp has been pressuring him to smuggle drugs across state lines. In Malik Vitthal’s compelling debut feature film IMPERIAL DREAMS, Bambi may know how to slide into the projects, but he has yet to learn how to get out. – E.B.