Melonie Diaz has been talking about the Trayvon Martin verdict all week, but that’s okay. “People are upset. I get it,” she says with a heavy sigh, speaking to the Georgia Straight from her home in Los Angeles. “I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say about the situation. I’m incredibly furious.”

Several days before the interview, George Zimmerman had been found not guilty in the killing of the black teenager in Florida. Diaz happens to be promoting a film that depicts the senseless death of another African-American: Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old father who was shot in the back by a transit cop on New Year’s Day, 2009.

The timing, as Diaz acknowledges, is painful. Not least of all because the actor, like everybody else who worked on Fruitvale Station—named for the BART station in Oakland, California, where Grant’s life was taken—took part in the microbudgeted feature because they hoped it might make some kind of difference. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, who plays Grant’s mom, was committed enough to pour her own fee back into the project.

“This is a movie, but it’s also a movement for me,” Diaz says of the film, which opens Friday (August 2).” It’s really rare when you’re part of something that is so topical and so socially relevant. My stake in it is so much more than anything I’ve ever done, because we are part of something that is inspiring many people and creating conversation.”

There’s certainly no disputing the power of the film, which is constructed around the last day of Grant’s life as he deals with money and job problems, along with a petty-criminal past that he wants to put well behind him. It’s been almost unanimously praised after a prize-winning sweep (jury and audience) at Sundance last year, but Fruitvale Station has its detractors. Variety slammed the film post-Sundance for presenting an emotionally biased portrait of the victim, then subsequently ran no less than another three critiques of varying admiration.

It’s a worthwhile debate, but Diaz, in this case, would rather defer to the French fashion world.

“What’s that famous Coco Chanel quote?” she begins. “ ‘What you think about me is none of my business.’ You know, not everyone is going to like you. It’s okay... But that’s one review out of the trillions of good ones that have been complimentary and supportive of the cause and what we’re trying to do.”

In light of that, Diaz offers a weary but sensible view of what’s still possible in a world where Grant’s killer, Johannes Mehserle, was sentenced to two years for involuntary manslaughter. Riots ensued in Oakland, but first time director Ryan Coogler ends his film with actual footage of a peaceful memorial outside Fruitvale Station, and he allows a brief shot of Grant’s real daughter, Tatiana.

“When I have kids,” Diaz says, “when I have a family, and nieces and nephews, I’m gonna teach them to love more and be kinder and to not judge someone by the colour of their skin or any other thing. I think that’s the only power we have right now.”

After a beat, she adds: “Hopefully, we can raise future jurors that will make the right decision.”