An independent filmmaker has left his profession and keeps it a secret. Years later, his niece finds his old films in a locked trunk and discovers his strong principles when it came to supporting his actors and his art overall.

The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and 7, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother, and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur.