Gotham tells the true story of what happened in New York City during the twenty years from 1993 to 2013. How did a city with over 2200 murders, 93,000 violent robberies and 147,000 car thefts in 1990 become the capitol of the world a mere handful of years later? This feature documentary explores what happened during these decades, told by the people who did the hard work, some at great personal and professional cost.

In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city's subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he's battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts.