A favorite at festivals worldwide, BLACKOUT premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, opened the 2007 Urbanworld/VIBE Film Festival, where director Jerry LaMothe earned the "Directors Spotlight Award," and screened at the Chicago International Film Festival, Sao Paolo Film Festival, London’s BIFF Festival in London, Amsterdam’s Africa in the Picture International Film Festival and the Zurich Film Festival.

In the summer of 2003, the largest blackout in history darkened cities throughout the northeastern United States and Canada. Inspired by actual events, director and screenwriter Jerry LaMothe creates a poignant picture of a struggling neighborhood in Brooklyn as it descends into chaos. Looters emerge, violence breaks out and residents fear for their lives as they wait for help that never comes. Based on real life stories, LaMothe weaves a compelling narrative from the lives of an interrelated group of residents, including a rising young publishing executive and her traumatized husband, a single mother and her college-bound son, the neighborhood poet and a Middle Eastern convenience store owner, an elderly building superintendent and the wealthy white landlord he shelters from the tenants’ anger, the gangbangers who terrorize the neighborhood, and the local barber. Some will find each other in the darkness, others will lose everything they have ever worked for and East Flatbush will never forget the events of these two days.

Additional members of the film’s gifted ensemble cast include LaTanya Richardson-Jackson (The Fighting Temptations, Freedomland), Sean Blakemore (Dress 2 Impre$$, Woman Thou Art Loosed), Zoe Saldana (Guess Who), Jamie Hector (The Wire), Michael B. Jordan (The Wire), hip hop star Prodigy (of Mobb Deep), Tony® Award nominee Anthony Chisholm (Radio Golf) Melvin Van Peebles (Sweetback's Bad Ass Song) and Saul Rubinek (War).