When the Mob Came

Is “cancel culture” a real thing? Are public shaming and de-platforming campaigns justified as a way of advancing social justice and holding the powerful to account, or are they evidence of a creeping proto-totalitarianism?

What happens when these tools are weaponized for personal or political advantage, and how does a person rebuild after public cancellation? In this feature film, documentarian Caylan Ford tries to answer these questions by turning the lens on her own life and experience of cancellation. This is a story of media credulity, political calculation, betrayal, and obsession.

It’s about the failure and the triumph of friendship, the spiritual struggle to believe in things unseen, and the need to make meaning out of suffering. It’s also a re-litigation of Plato’s Gorgias dialogue, and a test of Socrates’ claim that “to do injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue is to be followed above all things.”