Two years ago, director Termaine (M5) Brown, 29, pitched his camera in his Harlem neighborhood to shoot a controversial movie about criminally minded children.
The new straight-to-DVD movie, Toddlers, follows a gang of chubby cheeked children who sell drugs, brandish weapons, have sex and murder rivals. As the video makes its rounds, some parents and anti-violence organizations are up in arms, and have threatened to boycott the stores that carry the video.
Brown says parents just don’t want to know what their kids are up to: “The parents don’t get to see what these kids are really doing,” he says.
The star of the film, Jordan Pena, 16, agrees that the film depicts reality for today’s urban youth.
“It promotes how to turn into a man,” Pena says, adding that his family was proud of his first movie role.
Watch the trailer; tell us what you think.
