Steve James has been back to Chicago where his heart and soul belongs to when he first read his friend Alex’s New York Times Magazine cover story on an innovative organization, CeaseFire. The Interrupters gave the multi award winning director a chance to return to some of the same streets and neighborhoods he traversed in Hoop Dreams. While that film followed the fortunes of two families hoping to use basketball as a ticket out of poverty, the harsh realities of urban violence and despair suffused their lives then and now. The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie - three dedicated ‘violence interrupters’ who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they themselves once employed, as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. On occasion, they find themselves using the very threat of violence to defuse an altercation. As they venture into their communities, they confront the importance of family, the noxious nature of poverty, and the place of race. During the production over 14 months, Chicago, a national symbol for the violence, was besieged by high-profile incidents. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn persistence of violence in our cities.