As a young child, Gamal ‘G’ Turawa was brought up in a white foster family in Kent. He didn’t give much thought to being Black until he moved to London with his biological father, where a Metropolitan Police officer spewed a racist insult at him. Why then did he end up aspiring to become an officer with the same police force? Recounting his life’s story with riveting candour, Turawa explores how a deep-seeded desire ‘to be as white as possible’ led him to a career at the Metropolitan Police, the racism he experienced there and even perpetrated himself as an officer, and how coming out of the closet as a gay man ultimately led him down a path of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Intimately captured by the UK director Cherish Oteka, the documentary The Black Cop: A Villain, a Victim and a Hero is both a troubling account of institutional racism in the UK and, through Turawa, a deeply moving portrait of the complexities of identity.