UB Alum Akiya McKnight Returns to Campus to Discuss her Powerful Film

Bryson Moore, Akiya McKnight, and Naomi Santiago discuss their powerful film, Served.

By Emily Ortiz

“Mass incarceration is a family business.”

You may have seen this chilling tag line in bold letters across a series of campus flyers. This is the work of longtime activist, filmmaker, and UB Alum, Akiya McKnight. She has returned to campus to showcase her short film Served. With director Noami Santiago and cinematographer Bryson Moore, this team has put together what could be the most important short film you see this year.

We open with the familiar morning routine of our main character, Reena. The viewer is a fly on the wall as she gets herself and her two loving children ready for the day. The tired eyes, the half-on, half-off jacket and gloves, that intimate start to a chilly day known by all Bridgeport residents. It is here when tragedy strikes.

Reena, our hard-working and kind lead, is arrested for the sale of narcotics, flipping this family on its head and setting them all down a path none of them can escape. Their individual endings will remain a mystery in this article, as I implore our readers to seek out the film themselves. At its core, however, the film is a dissection of the mass incarceration of Black people. Who do we blame in these moments?

You do the crime, you do the time. But what happens when you are a part of the minority that is kept in underfunded schools and given no avenues out? When you have innocent mouths to feed without any means to do so? When past leaders have already poisoned your community with the plague of addiction? Well, our justice system does the American thing. They count on every obstacle they have put in your way to separate you from your children. Another cog in the prison-industrial complex as you are locked up in modern day slavery. That good old family business will lie in wait to prey on those precious babies you leave behind. They wait with the hope that in your absence, your children will succumb to the same evil.

McKnight captures that dread with every bit of skill you can expect from a filmmaker with her experience. Still, she left her audience with a beam of hope when she opened the floor for questions after the screening of the film. She shares that she was a child of an incarcerated parent and found this creative outlet as her way to work through her memories.

All those nights with an ear pressed tight against locked bedroom doors, desperate to hear the grown folks’ business. She knows that pain good and well. McKnight shares these sealed stories as her passion now, to keep them in the light and keep others aware.

Screening the film

During the Q and A discussion, one student asked McKnight a heavy question: “How is this story relevant to black people now? Isn't it counterproductive to the stories of Black excellence we stream now?"

McKnight’s response was swift. “Until this country has completely changed, this story will always be relevant.” Naomi Santiago, also seated on the stage, offered another perspective: “She (Akiya) IS black excellence.”

In the dark days our country seems to be stuck in, remember this excellence. Remember people like Akiya McKnight, Bryson Moore, and Naomi Santiago, and believe these times are not forever. There will also be those who believe there is a future beyond the present moment and who are willing to create a new future through their storytelling, their artistry, and their advocacy.

Emily Ortiz is a senior majoring in English and Professional Writing at UB. She was also the editor of the 2026 edition of Groundswell.