Courtesy Triple Threat TV
“The name ‘Colin Kaepernick’ is provocative. He put his ideals above his wallet. He basically said, ‘I understand the consequences. I will live with whatever happens,’” says Gary Cohen, co-producer of the first feature-length documentary on the Colin Kaepernick story, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and is available to stream online beginning September 2.
Kaepernick & America, equal parts compelling and compassionate, opens with his bright-eyed school years and his star-making six-year run as quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, during which he led the team to the 2013 Super Bowl.
For a non-NFL-watching audience, the movie makes clear just how prominent Kaepernick was in the mainstream sports world—and thus how much he risked and ultimately sacrificed. But even ardent fans will gain new insight.
For instance, we witness the involvement of Green Beret Nate Boyer, who met with Kaepernick and helped him decide that taking a knee as a statement would appropriately express both respect and pain. “Colin’s path to that particular gesture is fascinating,” Cohen says. “To me, his collaboration with Nate is part of the core strength of what this became. He took a knee. He did it twenty times in a row, in the face of any blowback—he did it.”
Courtesy Triple Threat TV
The production team behind the documentary first came to discuss the idea for the project in 2017, shortly after the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. “The intersection of Kaepernick and Trump really gives a window into a moment in America,” Cohen reflects. “That to me was the opportunity that we dove into.”
“Around then, we were pretty deep into Colin’s protest,” recalls co-producer Bill Stephney, who as a child benefitted from the influence of his father, Ted Stephney, one of Sports Illustrated’s first black editors, and family friend Muhammad Ali.
Kaepernick’s protest struck Stephney as a critical topic that was, at the time, underexplored: “I wanted to learn more about what Colin was doing—but there wasn’t a definitive, longform piece of work on it. I thought we should try this. The story covered ground from on-field protest to social protest to politics.”
Since then, a few other related projects have come out—such as a shorter documentary, The Price of Protest: The Colin Kaepernick Story, produced in Germany, and Netflix’s fictionalized drama series Colin in Black and White. The story of Kaepernick’s protest has also been covered extensively in print and online in The Progressive, and in a 2021 book, The Kaepernick Effect by Progressive sports writer Dave Zirin.
The diversity of the film’s production team and the interweaving of their perspectives give the project added depth. Cohen is white; Stephney is Black; and the film has two co-directors—Ross Hockrow, who is white, and Tommy Walker, who is Black. “It’s important to me that our team is biracial,” says Walker. “We can go round and round with only Black people speaking to Black causes—and even, sometimes, Black people feeling disempowered when white people try to get involved. If we can do this together, it benefits all of us. It’s about curiosity and love, and we can’t lose that. We can’t become paralyzed—‘paralysis by analysis.’ ”
“That’s the only way change happens,” says Walker. “It’s gotta be an army of people working together.”
Kaepernick & America also features Don Lemon, DeRay Mckesson, Pam Oliver, Steve Wyche, Nate Boyer, Hue Jackson, and April Dinwoodie. It was produced by Stephney, Cohen, and Matt McDonald, with Lemon and John Battsek as executive producers.
“That’s the only way change happens. It’s gotta be an army of people working together.”
Asked what he hopes viewers will gain from the film, Walker is pensive. “There are a lot of themes I think are important—courage and conviction, identity, a deeper understanding of who we are in this country. We’re attracted to the name Colin Kaepernick, but it’s as much about America, if not more. I want people to understand the courage he showed—societally and personally. Getting people to have empathy would be something I would want.”
The film shows us Kaepernick, who is biracial and was adopted as a baby, raised with love and support by his white family. We also see his birth mother, who is white (and was not in touch with Colin while he grew up), surfacing unexpectedly in recent years to criticize his protest. We see coverage of the police shootings of unarmed Black people that inspired Kaepernick’s protest actions; the NFL doing its best to avoid him personally and professionally—they viewed his protest as “bad for the business,” says Cohen; and Kaepernick willing to walk away from said business in order to make his point. The film is thoughtful but doesn’t spoon-feed viewers with any easy answers.
Though Kaepernick & America is the first full-length documentary film on Kaepernick and his protest—coming out, as it happens, days after Kaepernick and his partner, Nessa Diab, announced the birth of their first child—other projects are in the works.
Kaepernick himself has signed with Disney to participate in an upcoming project that is being directed by Spike Lee, a longtime friend of Stephney’s. The filmmakers look forward to other future projects on this topic.
“We feel this deserves to be told from many angles,” Stephney says. “As important as this story has been, I’m surprised we’re the first film on it. There should have been several already. Maybe that in itself is something to consider: As big as this has been—it shocks me that ours is the first major project on this story.”