Million Dollar Block is a feature documentary that peers into the life of tenants in one block of public housing in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Confined to the Van Dyke Houses, the film creates a multilayered visual and aural representation of how city and state institutions affect residents and modify their perceptions of the world. With the changing landscape of Van Dyke as the backdrop, the film builds on the Justice Mapping Project’s "million-dollar blocks" by exploring the human underpinnings of crime in the context of public housing. Whether it be waiting for maintenance to make an outstanding repair, waiting for developers to break ground on the “affordable housing” development rising within the block’s borders, or waiting for their son’s unsolved murder to be solved, the residents of the Van Dyke Houses subsist in an institutional purgatory.

Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma are an award-winning directing team who produce independent documentaries and commissioned projects. Their last documentary, unmappable (2015), also stemmed from a series of maps, and garnered numerous awards and screened widely across the globe.

Diane Hodson is a documentary filmmaker, podcaster, and educator. She spent nearly a decade teaching at a public high school in Brooklyn prior to earning her MFA in Documentary Filmmaking from Wake Forest University. Currently Diane teaches filmmaking and storytelling at New York University, Westchester Community College, and the Jacob Burns Film Center. In addition, she produces serialized audio documentaries with Pineapple Street Media, most recently contributing to Missing Richard Simmons (2017) and Heaven's Gate (2017). Diane also works as a story and outreach consultant for independent filmmakers.

Jasmine Luoma is a documentary filmmaker and photographer. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Photojournalism and Spanish at the University of Florida and received her MFA in Documentary Filmmaking at Wake Forest University. Jasmine has traveled extensively to Central America to work on a social issue projects and produce content for NGOs. In addition, she has worked as a Post Production Coordinator for Kristi Jacobson’s latest film, Solitary (Tribeca 2016, HBO Broadcast 2017), and is now working with filmmaker Rachel Shuman on her latest film, One October (Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2017), and filmmaker David Sampliner on his upcoming film.