We Grown Now: A Powerful Evocation of Childhood… and Recent History

By Liz Braun

Rating: A

We Grown Now is an homage to time and place, specifically to a ‘90s childhood in the Cabrini-Green apartments in Chicago. It’s a sweet story of childhood friendship wrapped in a depressing piece of American history.

The Cabrini-Green complex was built as a model of public housing in the 1940s. The area began as a thriving community, but neglect, racist governance policies, and economic downturn eventually took their toll, and the area became known for poverty and gang violence.

We Grown Now is set in 1992 during a surge in crack use and not many years before the city of Chicago began to demolish the buildings — typical details from the outside looking in. But this is very much a story about the families who lived at Cabrini-Green and what it was like from the inside, versus the area’s reputation.

Writer-director Minhal Baig centres her story on two boys who are neighbours and best friends: Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez). We first meet them struggling to move a mattress from their apartment building into the street, where said mattress will be stacked on top of others to improve the jumping situation. Run; jump; land on the soft mattresses. Feels like flying.

This coming-of-age film captures the exuberance of childhood even as it shows the gradual encroachment of outside social pressures.

Malik lives with his sister, his mother (Jurnee Smollett), and his grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson). Eric lives with his father (Lil Rel Howery) and older sister.

Both children have protective family units, and they happily spend their time between school and play. They can barely contain their energy, for example, when they stand up in the classroom to start the day with the Pledge of Allegiance. ‘

For the boys, it’s an exercise in keeping still long enough to get the words out. For the viewer, already fully engaged with these kids, their recitation of “liberty and justice for all” is shattering.

In October of 1992, a seven-year-old child named Dantrell Davis was shot and killed at Cabrini-Green, and that real-life incident is included in We Grown Now. It is a turning point — in real life and in reel — and the film shows how the children now need ID cards to enter their own apartment buildings.

And there is an increased police presence in their lives.

Thereafter, things change. On a day the boys cut school, Malik sees for himself his mother’s abject terror when she thinks he and Eric are missing. But he has also seen something of the world outside Cabrini-Green, and his dreams about the future have broadened.

When change seems inevitable for Malik’s family, it marks a difficult move away from childhood and away from the people and places most familiar to him.

Beautifully shot and carefully told from the boys’ point of view, We Grown Now captures the world as children see it, a mix of reality and imagination that is beautifully executed. Much of that rests with the excellent performances from Baig’s young cast. The movie premiered at TIFF 2023.

We Grown Now. Written and directed by Minhal Baig. Starring Blake Cameron James, Gian Knight Ramirez, Jurnee Smollett, and S. Epatha Merkerson. In theatres May 10 in Toronto (TIFF Lightbox) and Vancouver (International Village). Opening in other Canadian cities throughout the spring and summer.