Search Film, Company, People...

HOLD YOUR FIRE

By Stefan FORBES

ARCHITECT - as SALES

Documentary - Completed 2021

Brooklyn, 1973. Shu'aib Raheem tried to steal guns for self-defense, starting the longest hostage siege in NYPD history. NYPD psychologist Harvey Schlossberg fought to reform police use of violence and save lives by using words, not guns.

- Year of production
- 2021
- Genres
- Documentary, Crime
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Director(s)
- Stefan FORBES
- Writer(s)
- Stefan FORBES
- Synopsis
- New York, 1973. A city boiling over and riven with violent factions. Four very young, very scared black men make a fatal mistake. Desperate to protect their families following a vicious attack, they hold up a Brooklyn gun-store with the intention of making off with a small quantity of firearms. But spotted by a passing police officer who calls in the might of the NYPD, they are instantly surrounded, and forced, along with all the store’s customers, into a knife-edge hostage situation.
  
  With no clear route of escape, a justifiable distrust of New York’s infamous police, and a store full of firearms, the men are committed to defending themselves, by any means necessary. And the NYPD needs little excuse to start shooting: a rapidly escalating stand-off threatens to explode into a full-blown massacre. But one young officer, Harvey Schlossberg, trained PHD, makes a brilliant, revolutionary suggestion: what if we talked to them? Can we save lives using words, not guns? And so, police hostage negotiation is born.
  
  From acclaimed filmmaker Stefan Forbes (Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story), Hold Your Fire is an electric, ticking-clock true crime thriller, told by the men and women who were there on the ground. Never more than a hair’s breadth away from disaster, can Harvey and his ground-breaking psychology lift the siege, and save the lives of everyone inside?