Our take
Depicting the horrifying cycle of abuse in the state’s prison system, The Alabama Solution is tough to watch. It was already hard to reckon with the related news reports, but what makes this documentary necessary is the way filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman teamed up with activists inside to get a deeper look into the prisons themselves. We mean this literally. A third of the footage comes straight from smuggled phones by the inmates, compiled for more than a decade, with much higher stakes than other works that employed guerilla filmmaking. Piecing together their footage with case reviews, news releases, and the state government’s wasteful, lackluster response, The Alabama Solution reveals the need for a better approach.
What it won
Sundance
1 nom
The story
Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of America’s deadliest prison systems.
Elsewhere
"This is a project for and by those who have experienced inhumanity firsthand yet refuse to have their voices snuffed out by a corrupt institution."
— Zachary Lee
"One of the most powerful exposés of the inhumanity of the American prison system I’ve ever seen. Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the movie is a scalding portrait of life on the inside that exerts a grip worthy of a thriller."
— Owen Gleiberman
The details
Navalny
Daniel Roher
The Menendez Brothers
Alejandro Hartmann
In the Same Breath
Female director & Nanfu Wang
All That Breathes
Shaunak Sen
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler
Judy Blume Forever
Davina Pardo & Leah Wolchok
The Arbor
Clio Barnard
After Innocence
Jessica Sanders
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
