 Black Picket Fence is director s Sergio Goes  poignant portrait of the bleak realities of life in the public housing projects of Brooklyn s East New York, one of the inner city s most dangerous and violent neighborhoods. Culled from nearly two years of filming, the documentary s candid interviews, lyric moments of grim beauty, and powerful verite footage takes us beyond the usual stereotypes of the rap world and into the life of Tislam Milliner, a struggling rapper who s ambitious to make it out of the "hood". At the age of 25, Tiz is considered a survivor. Through intimate vignettes of the Milliner family, Tiz s close-knit crew, his pregnant girlfriend, his overzealous manager, and his mentor, the legendary Kool G Rap, Tiz s hopes and the quiet despair of his "book of life filled with pain" gradually emerge. Tiz s best friend Mel is a veteran of the "drug game" and has spent some part of every year in prison since he was twelve. Now, he s out. But with little hope of breaking the game s vicious cycle of money, dark deeds and long spells of incarceration, Mel s life represents everything Tiz is trying to escape. Real escape, however, may be a goal beyond possibility. And with the birth of Tiz s son, it becomes unavoidably evident that Tiz s fate and his hopes for success involve far more than just his own happiness. The whole crew has come to depend on his realizing it.