Rising to fame during last year’s midterm elections, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is among the four women featured in a new Netflix documentary who challenged congressional incumbents in 2018.
The trailer for “Knock Down the House,” released Monday ahead of the film’s May 1 premiere, promises a behind-the-scenes, fly-on-the-wall look at the groundbreaking campaigns of Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush and Paula Jean Swearingen.
Directed by Rachel Lears, the film explores the obstacles the candidates faced as part of a groundswell of women who launched campaigns in 2018, many getting involved in politics for the first time.
“I was not trying to become an activist,” Bush says in the trailer. She is from St. Louis and became politically active following the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri.
“Some of us have got to get through. It’s about the whole movement,” Vilela says in the trailer.
Ocasio-Cortez, the only one of the four women to win in 2018, tells the other candidates in the trailer: “For one of us to make it through, a hundred of us have to try.” At least one, Bush, is running again in 2020.
The documentary won two awards in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where Ocasio-Cortez herself Skyped in for the premiere.
“Knock Down the House” premieres on Netflix and in select theaters May 1.
Watch the full trailer above.
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