#Prison
Rosa Ruth Boesten’s SXSW Winner “Master of Light” Acquired by HBO Documentary Films
HBO Documentary Films has landed worldwide rights to “Master of Light,” which took home SXSW’s top non-fiction prize earlier this year. Deadline confirmed the news. Rosa Ruth...
Trailer Watch: American Black Film Festival Winner “A Woman on the Outside”
Kristal Bush was a young child the first time she visited her father in prison. She didn’t get the opportunity to see him again until over a decade later, when she was 19 and able to drive...
Gilda Sheppard on Investigating a Culture of Punishment and Racism in “Since I Been Down”
Gilda Sheppard is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries throughout the U.S. and internationally. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient...
Alysa Nahmias’ “Krimes” Acquired by MTV Documentary Films
“Krimes” is going global. MTV Documentary Films acquired worldwide rights to Alysa Nahmias’ documentary, which made its world premiere at Heartland Film Festival and is currently...
DOC NYC 2021 Women Directors: Meet Alysa Nahmias – “Krimes”
Alysa Nahmias is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of the Los Angeles-based production company AJNA. Her work has been shown at festivals and exhibitions worldwide, including the Venice...
Trailer Watch: “Jacinta” Explores Intergenerational Trauma and Addiction
First-time director Jessica Earnshaw takes viewers inside Maine Correctional Center, where 26-year-old Jacinta and her mother, 46-year-old Rosemary, are incarcerated together, in...
Tribeca Winner “Jacinta” Lands at Hulu
Hulu is adding a Tribeca Film Festival award-winner to its slate. A press release announced that the streamer landed “Jacinta,” a documentary exploring drug addiction and...
Sabrina Van Tassel on Uncovering Flaws in the System in “The State of Texas vs. Melissa”
Sabrina Van Tassel is a French-American film director and journalist. As an investigative reporter, Van Tassel has directed more than 45 documentary films over the last 15 years for major television...
Pick of the Day: “Belly of the Beast”
Though it’s most closely associated with Nazi Germany, eugenics has a history stateside as well. And it’s not just a thing of the past. “Belly of the Beast” tells the story of...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2020 Women Directors: Meet Erika Cohn – “Belly of the Beast”
Erika Cohn is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning director and producer. Most recently she completed “The Judge,” a Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated film about the first woman judge...
DOC NYC 2019 Women Directors: Meet Katie Green and Carlye Rubin – “1275 Days”
Katie Green and Carlye Rubin have directed three feature documentaries together: “The (Dead Mothers) Club,” “The Family I Had,” and “1275 Days.” Together, the pair...
NYFF 2019 Women Directors: Meet Lynn Novick – “College Behind Bars”
Lynn Novick is an Emmy, Peabody, and Alfred I. duPont Columbia Award-winning filmmaker. For 30 years she has been directing and producing landmark documentary films about American culture, history,...
Annie Silverstein’s “Bull” Wins Top Honor at Deauville Film Festival
Annie Silverstein’s feature debut made a major impression at the 45th Deauville Film Festival. The coming-of-age rodeo drama took home three honors at the French fest: the Grand Prize, the...
Film as Grassroots Activism: Crowdfunding Picks
Films can have many impacts on their viewers: they can entertain, first and foremost, they can make you feel like you aren’t alone, and they can introduce you to new people or places. But they...
Cyntoia Brown Doc Acquired by Netflix
The fight for Cyntoia Brown’s clemency will be chronicled in an upcoming Netflix doc. The streamer just nabbed rights to a feature documentary about the prisoner’s experience in the...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Nance Ackerman, Ariella Pahlke, and Teresa MacInnes – “Conviction”
Nance Ackerman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and multimedia artist. Her films have won awards for direction and cinematography. Her credits include “Cottonland,” “Four...
Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre Talks About Her New Film “The Mustang”
To achieve a sense of realism in “The Mustang,” Laure de Clermont-Tonnere spent five years researching the U.S. prison system and animal therapy. Her new film focuses on an inmate, played by...
Trailer Watch: Mary Harron Tells the Manson Girls’ Stories in “Charlie Says”
“I know everyone thinks we’re these scary creatures who committed these horrible crimes, but we did what we had to do,” says one of the so-called “Manson Girls” in a new...
Debra Granik Working on Doc About Life After Incarceration
Debra Granik’s latest film hit theaters just a couple of weeks ago, but the Oscar-nominated writer-director is already in post-production on her next project. The “Leave No Trace”...
Trailer Watch: Friendships Are At Stake in Season 6 of “Orange Is the New Black”
“Navigating adult female friendships is so complicated!” Suzanne (Uzo Aduba) laments as she tries to understand the inner workings of her new surroundings. If Litchfield Penitentiary had...
Trailer Watch: Tessa Thompson and Melissa Leo Hit the Road in Laurie Collyer’s “Furlough”
“For the next 36 hours I own you,” Tessa Thompson tells Melissa Leo in a new trailer for “Furlough.” The dramedy sees the “Thor: Ragnarok” actress playing a rookie inmate tasked with...
Alfre Woodard to Play a Prison Warden in “Clemency” From Chinonye Chukwu
Alfre Woodard’s recent roles have seen her playing the President of the United States and a comic book villain, and now she’s set to take on the role of a prison warden. The Emmy and Golden...
Exclusive: Women Re-Adjust to Life Outside of Prison in Clip of “Returning Citizens”
“Since I’ve been home, I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a position to form an organization known as The WIRE, Women Involved in Re-Entry Efforts. And The WIRE is basically a group of...
Chelsea Manning Documentary in the Works
A documentary about former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning is in the works. According to a press release, “XY Chelsea” is the result of several years of “unique access” to...
Trailer Watch: Kristi Jacobson’s “Solitary” Turns Critical Eye on Supermax Prisons
Most offenders remain in their cell 23 hours a day, seven days a week at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax prison built on an Appalachian mountaintop. An interviewee reveals this shocking fact in a...
Trailer Watch: Ava DuVernay’s “The 13th” Critiques Mass Incarceration
Director Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) has secured the Opening Night spot at this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from September 30-October 16, for her documentary “The 13th.” And now...