In ‘They Fight’, director Sheldon Candis takes the story of a real Southeast D.C. boxing gym and turns it into a feature-length meditation on second chances, mentorship, and what it costs to build something in a place the rest of the world has written off. Based on the 2018 documentary of the same name, the film centers on Walt Manigan, a reformed ex-convict played by André Holland who returns home determined to be present for his young son and rebuild a life with the boy’s mother.
The only opening Walt finds is at the last place he expected: the boxing gym he thought he had left behind. There, he takes on a group of teenage boys, coaching them through the fear, discipline, and hunger it takes to make it to the ring, all while wrestling with a past that keeps finding its way back into the corner with him. The story builds toward a National Championship bout between two of his young fighters, best friends whose bond is tested the moment they step across from each other.
Where the documentary let the D.C. youth boxing world speak for itself, Candis’s feature adaptation leans into character. Holland delivers a lived-in performance as a man carrying more than he lets on. Wendell Pierce, playing a figure named Slim, brings the kind of gravity that makes every scene he is in feel like it matters more than it did a second ago. Candis, in only his second feature in thirteen years, calls the film “the 10,000 hours rule on screen,” and the discipline shows. The punches land, but so does the quieter question underneath: what does it take to make a home for yourself in a life you almost lost?
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The Knockturnal’s Jai Singh Nanda sat down with Holland, Pierce, and Candis during the film’s press day at The New York EDITION, hours before the film’s Tribeca premiere, to discuss meeting the real Walt Manigan, the parts of this work that have to stay human as AI enters the industry, and what audiences going through a hard chapter in life might walk away with when the credits roll.
