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The Paralyzed

“We’re nobody. We’re little people, you know? People that nobody thinks about, because really, what do we have to say? Who cares about our mugs? We’ll never be heroes. We’ll become fucking bums.”

Pittsburgh, late 80s. The closing of the factory has pushed hundreds of workers out of work, with no hope of finding work in a city looking to a future they are no longer a part of. Believe in What? shows us the other side of the gentrification story: the lives of those it has left behind. Timmy struggles to maintain a semblance of dignity, to find enough to feed his family. Pat, his wife, moves heaven and earth to provide care for their eldest daughter, Pat, his wife, moves heaven and earth to provide care for their eldest daughter, Katie, disabled from an unknown neurological event.

But what can you hold on to when all hope seems lost? When the city itself has abandoned those who built it, who forged its identity? When you no longer feel like you exist anywhere, neither among your friends nor within your own family?

Richard Krawiec has no equal when it comes to successfully telling the story of the disintegration of our world by embodying it in intense, touching and fragile characters.