Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) returns to the big screen this weekend with her new drama Detroit. The film stars John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell, John Krasinski, and Anthony Mackie.

The summer of 1967 was a pivotal moment in modern American history when the country was beset by growing political and social unrest: the escalation of the country’s military engagement in the Vietnam War and decades of racial injustice and repression. The epicenters of all this discontent and simmering rage proved to be the nation’s major cities with their systemic discrimination, racial disparities in housing and education, and growing unemployment in African-American communities.

Two nights after the Detroit rebellion began, a report of gunshots in the vicinity of a National Guard staging area prompted the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police, the Michigan Army National Guard and a local private security guard to search and seize an annex of the nearby Algiers Motel. Flouting procedural rules, several policemen forcefully and viciously interrogated motel guests, conducting a “death game” in an attempt to intimidate someone, anyone, into confessing. By the end of the night, three unarmed young men had been gunned down point blank, and several other men and women were brutally beaten.

Bigelow used an unorthodox casting approach to find her cast. “I created scenarios that mimicked the script but were situational and was thrilled to find how nimble and imaginative the actors were and how comfortable they were with situations that were always in flux and fluid. That’s how I determined the casting. The actors who were chosen demonstrated, without exception, a densely rich and versatile emotional complexity far beyond their years.”

Detroit is rated 18A.