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."