On April 30, filmmaker Cynthia Kao posted a video to TikTok in which she drew connections between her four-minute short film titled
Groundhog Day for a Black Man and Free s project. Kao explained that her film, which was released in December 2016, follows a Black man who relives the same day and tries to survive a police interaction.
Kao says that a producer from video news outlet NowThis reached out asking for her permission to use pieces of the video in a report after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. In an email seen in Kao s TikTok, the producer said they found the short very powerful and wanted to amplify it and share the message with our audience.