75 minutes, color, 2025

Featuring Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne and former NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Changing Lanes investigates why our streets are designed the way they are, and what it will take to make them safer and more livable.

When a beloved teacher is tragically killed in a hit-and-run crash in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a grassroots movement emerges to transform a notoriously dangerous four-lane boulevard into a safer, two-lane street with protected bike lanes. While many applaud the proposed change, it also sparks a backlash led in part by a powerful local business owner. As government support begins to waver, neighbors unite to challenge entrenched interests and fight for a safer Greenpoint.

Changing Lanes situates this local struggle within broader historical, political, environmental, and social contexts through interviews with politicians, activists, urban planners, entrepreneurs, and cultural icons – a compelling call to action for democracy at street level.

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"Great streets aren't built – they are fought for and they are won. In recounting the battle for a single bike lane in Brooklyn, Changing Lanes tells the story of every city struggling to wrest back its streets and reimagine them for people." - Janette Sadik-Khan, NYC Transportation Commissioner (2007–2013)

"Changing Lanes is more than a film about bikes and public space. It’s about who wields power, what defines a community, and how regular citizens can organize in the face of deep corruption and other seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It is very much a movie made for the political and cultural moment the country finds itself in right now." - Doug Gordon, Co-host, The War on Cars podcast

"Made by a bicyclist, largely filmed from aboard a bicycle, featuring cyclists illustrious and ordinary, Changing Lanes is charged with the energy of urban cycling – New York cycling. Like no other film, Changing Lanes makes clear that bicyclists are the passionate heart of the livable streets movement." - Charles Komanoff, Transportation Economist & Environmental Activist

"More than a story about one street, Changing Lanes offers a vivid case study in how grassroots movements take shape: the resistance to change, the grip of the status quo, the messiness of political processes, the wins and setbacks, and the mix of strategy, timing, and luck that ultimately drives – or derails – change in our cities." - Marcia Ely, Director of Programs, Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Public Library

More about this film's theatrical run

Filmmaker's website

IMDb

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