Murder Factory documentary shows the sorrow behind Kansas City’s homicide rate

Mike B. Rollen, a local cinematographer, set out to make a film that measures the toll of urban violence. He took his camera into living rooms and funeral parlors to show that Kansas City’s murder rate is more than just a number and a ribbon of police tape on the 10 o’clock news.

Rollen encountered a number of people whose family lives are haunted by street violence. “One lady in the film, her daughter’s father was killed, her brother was killed, and when I interviewed her, it was two days after her son was killed,” Rollen says. “All murdered in Kansas City. And all the those cases at the time were unsolved.”