HBO announces Baltimore documentary

BALTIMORE — Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray will be the subject of an HBO documentary directed by Sonja Sohn, the cable channel announced over the weekend on the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles.

Titled “For the Love of Baltimore,” the film will debut sometime this year, but no date is yet set, an HBO press release says.

The production “explores a city divided,” according to the release. “Told through the journeys of local activists, police officers, community residents and gang affiliates, it shows a city grappling with its history of police brutality, as well as crime and decades of economic disenfranchisement, as six law enforcement officers are brought to trial, but none are convicted.”

According to HBO, the film also “shows a distraught and damaged community on an ever-elusive search for both justice and the common humanity of people who have previously seen each other only as adversaries.”

Sohn, who played Detective Shakima Greggs on “The Wire,” was in Baltimore in 2015 following the death of Gray conducting workshops and classes with residents in the neighborhood that was ground zero for the civil unrest that followed Gray’s death.

She helped organize an event at Artscape in 2015 that included fellow cast members of “The Wire” and Baltimore residents voicing stories from residents of the Penn North neighborhood that Gray called home.

“For the Love of Baltimore” is one of 14 documentaries HBO announced on press tour for debut in 2017.