Please don’t be indifferent to our pain: 'Two Distant Strangers' helmer gives moving Oscar-winning speech

The 93rd Academy Awards saw ‘Two Distant Strangers’ directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe win the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short.

With a muted awards show owing to the pandemic, Travon Free made an impact on the stage with his politically motivated award-winning speech that spoke of racial injustice and police brutality. In his acceptance speech, Travon Free said “God is good,” and added, “Today, the police will kill three people, and tomorrow, the police will kill three people—and the day after that, police will kill three people because on average, the police in America everyday kill three people, which amounts to about 1,000 people per year.”

Noting that “those people happen to disproportionately be Black people,” he then went on to reference iconic writer James Baldwin, who once said, “The most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to other peoples’ pain.”

Travon urged, “So, I just ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don’t be indifferent to our pain.”

His partner Martin Desmond Roe then thanked the actors Joey Bada$$, Andrew Howard, Zaria, and A-list producers including Lawrence Bender and Sean Combs involved with the Oscar-winning short. He said, “We’d like to thank Netflix for giving our short film the chance to be seen by the world. We’d like to thank the Academy for championing the art of the short film.”

Backstage at the Oscars, Free expanded on the comments he made on stage. “We knew [Two Distant Strangers] would be a film that would be different for people to watch and to politically engage with….To be holding these [Oscars] for a movie as potent and as serious as this film is, from the Academy, I think is unbelievable. It’s amazing that we could be here today holding Oscars for a film about police brutality. It’s incredible. I had an idea while we were out protesting and marching …how I was internalizing the pain of seeing so many Black people killed by the police… this feels like living the worst version of Groundhog Day.”

The Oscar film ‘Two Distant Strangers’ follows Carter (Joey Bada$$), a Black cartoonist who looks to get back home to his dog, after spending the night with a new romantic interest. As the character steps outside, he is brutally murdered by the police, for no reason at all—and subsequently, he finds himself stuck in a time loop, where he’s forced to relive this moment, over and over again.