Four exceptional women mount grassroots campaigns against powerful incumbents in Knock Down the House, an inspiring look at the 2018 midterm elections that tipped the balance of power. When tragedy struck her family in the middle of the financial crisis, Bronx-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to work double shifts as a bartender to save her home from foreclosure. After losing a loved one to a preventable medical condition, Amy Vilela didn't know what to do with the anger she... (Full plot summary below)
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Four exceptional women mount grassroots campaigns against powerful incumbents in Knock Down the House, an inspiring look at the 2018 midterm elections that tipped the balance of power. When tragedy struck her family in the middle of the financial crisis, Bronx-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to work double shifts as a bartender to save her home from foreclosure. After losing a loved one to a preventable medical condition, Amy Vilela didn't know what to do with the anger she felt about America's broken health care system. Cori Bush, a registered nurse and pastor, was drawn to the streets when the police shooting of an unarmed black man brought protests and tanks into her neighborhood. A coal miner's daughter, Paula Jean Swearengin was fed up with watching her friends and family suffer from the environmental effects of the coal industry.
Leave your thoughts about Knock Down the House.
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDirector Lears and co-writer/editor Robin Blotnick had the benefit of knowing the outcomes when they put together the film, so it’s easy to understand why Ocasio-Cortez is the primary focus. But they do an excellent job of weaving in the stories of the three equally impressive candidates. |
| The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinAny way you slice it, and even if you're not entirely in agreement with the various subjects' positions on Medicare for all or the Green New Deal, this film is a winner by a landslide. |
| Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattOfficially, Knock follows four progressive female candidates, though the one who inevitably dominates is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx-bred waitress–turned–congressional unicorn. It’s a lot of fun to ride along on her wildly improbable rise, from slinging margaritas and scooping out ice buckets to taking down one of the most powerful Democrats in the House. |
| ObserverOliver JonesWhile it was a little disappointing to see the film relegate the other candidates to backup singers to Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s leading lady, that doesn’t make their contributions to the movement that elected her any less significant. Nor does it dull the emotional impact of her remarkable achievement. |
| Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonTheir personal stories are just as interesting, and taken together, they add insight into our nation’s unusual political moment, equal parts instability and possibility. |
| Slant MagazinePat BrownRachel Lears’s film is a rebuttal to the position that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's election victory was an incidental event in American politics. |
| Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranIt all comes together on election night, as Lears shadows Ocasio-Cortez and captures her disbelief as she nears her post-election party and suddenly realizes she has in fact won. It’s precisely the kind of you-are-there moment, one of many, that makes Knock Down the House so satisfying. |
| Vanity FairSonia SaraiyaLears’s lens captures not just the candidates, but the volunteers—scrappy, seasoned canvassers and callers, smoking cigarettes in Nevada or crowding on porches in West Virginia. This is the process. |
| Rolling StonePeter TraversThe fighting spirit of this female quartet blazes through every frame of this galvanizing film. “We did this without knowing shit,” says Vilela. That’s just a beginning. Way before the movie ends, you’ll feel their fire. |
| IndieWireKate ErblandKnock Down the House takes its viewers on the inside of a propulsive movement that’s changing by the moment, an energetic look inside history as its being made, even when the results aren’t always the ones that are so fervently hoped for. |
