Synopsis

After a white woman claims that a Black carjacker stole her car with her young son inside, detective Lorenzo Council investigates the disappearance amid mounting racial tensions in a New Jersey housing project. As the search expands to an abandoned children's home called Freedomland, conflicting accounts and buried personal trauma challenge the official story and threaten to inflame the community.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film adapts Richard Price's 1998 novel, with Price also writing the screenplay.

• Price has said that the story was partly inspired by the 1994 Susan Smith case, in which a mother falsely blamed a Black man for the disappearance of her children.

• Although the story is set in fictional New Jersey communities, much of the production was filmed in New York City and nearby Yonkers. Mulford Gardens housing project in Yonkers served as the main housing-project location.

• Principal photography lasted approximately 39 days. Most scenes were shot on location, with only a small number of apartment interiors built on a soundstage.

• The abandoned institution called Freedomland was filmed at the former Seaview Hospital on Staten Island.

• Sony Pictures initially planned a limited December 23, 2005 release in Los Angeles and New York before moving the film's U.S. release to February 17, 2006.