Almost two years after Freddie Gray’s homicide, and after a year of documentaries focusing on police violence, the city of Baltimore and the protests which took place in April 2015 are the focus of a new film.

“Baltimore Rising” is the directorial debut of “The Wire” star Sonja Sohn, and premiered on HBO last month. The documentary tries to take a complete accounting of a city struggling for order and justice.

HBO Documentary, “Baltimore Rising”, focuses on the city of Baltimore and the protests which took place in April 2015 after Freddie Gray’s homicide. (Screengrab from the movie trailer)

The film is a frustrating work. After 90 minutes of drilling deep into the structural issues at the foundations of violence in Baltimore, it comes away with many elements of the current crisis, but it doesn’t capture everything. The film is remarkable in how particularly Baltimore it is—especially in how it relies on the viewer to fill in a lot of the gaps.

For example, the camera lingers on not-yet-mayor Catherine E. Pugh twice, showing her with her arms linked with other protestors, but she is never named on screen. It similarly relies on the viewer knowing who Tawanda Jones is on sight.

Among the “talking heads” segments, there is almost zero national opinion or expertise. Rather, what is there might be Anderson Cooper’s or Rachel Maddow’s voice narrating the scene in the moment. Even the Maryland State House plays a minor role in the film; the most salient role of the state in Sohn’s presentation is when the National Guard arrives to quell the violence April 28.

Nonetheless, the documentary conveys a sense Baltimore is all on its own, but also that the community is all that it needs.

That community is represented in part by Adam Jackson, CEO of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle; Makayla Gilliam-Price, a high schooler, activist and founder of City Bloc; Genard “Shadow” Barr, an addiction recovery specialist; and Kwame Rose, an activist and public speaker.

Rose first came to national attention in a viral video where he confronted Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, shaming Rivera and the national news media at large.

The opposition, such as it is, is the Baltimore City Police Department, embodied by Commissioner Kevin Davis, Lt. Colonel Melvin Russell and detective Dawnyell Taylor, the lead investigator in the Freddie Gray murder case.

The film does not take a critical or skeptical look at law enforcement. Russell is allowed to rationalize the Mondawmin Mall lockdown, the action that precipitated the ensuing riot, as an act of good faith. He receives no pushback from interviewers or producers when he claims that multiple “sources” claimed that marauding bands of youths would take to the street and emulate scenes from “The Purge: Anarchy.”

Similarly, Davis’s solution to demands from the community for jobs and drawdown and de-escalation with the police is answered with the agreement that the police and community come together for the Unity Bowl, a football game between the police and residents of West Baltimore.

As such, without any criticism of the police or the protestors, there’s no real antagonist and no one to overcome, leaving out what Gilliam-Price points to as important in a political process: catharsis. The moment that feels closest to victory comes when Detective Taylor rushes from office to office and screen to screen for a verdict on Caesar Goodson, one of the officers indicted in the killing of Freddie Gray. When it’s announced Goodson will be cleared on all charges, she smiles and pumps her fist. The film presents no other triumphs.

“Baltimore Rising” is presented by HBO and is available for streaming from HBO Go and HBO.com.