Live captions available at: https://bit.ly/17thJulySubs and BSL interpretation will be provided on screen.

 

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL – U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION – GRAND JURY PRIZE WINNER

 

Join us and commissioning editor on The Independent’s comment desk Kuba Shand-Baptiste for a very special Q&A with writer-director Chinonye Chukwu plus lead actors Alfre Woodard, Aldis Hodge and Wendell Pierce this Friday (17 July – the UN International Day of Justice) at 8.00pm.

Click the YouTube video above to watch or via our Facebook Live page HERE 

Watch CLEMENCY from 17th July.  All cinemas are listed on www.clemencythefilm.co.uk

Live captioning and BSL interpretation

 

SYNOPSIS

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden, Bernadine Williams. The emotional wedge in her marriage grows. Memories of a recently botched execution plague her daily. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

 

Director’s Statement

“The morning after Troy Davis was executed in a Georgia State prison in 2011, the sounds of the hundreds of thousands who protested against his execution kept ringing in my ears, and I couldn’t help but wonder: if so many of us struggled with what had happened to Mr. Davis, what about the people who actually had to carry out his execution? What if some of them were also grappling with having to kill this man? Thus, the seed for CLEMENCY was planted.

 

I spent four years researching for CLEMENCY. I spoke with six different wardens, interviewed corrections officers, death row lawyers, Lieutenants and a Director of Corrections about their experiences working in prisons and in death row facilities. I spoke with men currently on death row and one man who was exonerated from death row, after being incarcerated for 28 years for a crime he did not commit.

Wardens, former death row lawyers and several formerly incarcerated individuals read my script and gave me detailed feedback. I also volunteered for nonprofit legal organizations on several clemency cases for women serving life sentences. My work on these cases included shooting the video testimonies of co-defendants to be used during clemency hearings; shooting and editing individual video testimonies for clemency applications to be sent to the Ohio governor; creating a PSA campaign. This really informed my grounding CLEMENCY in the ecosystem of humanities tied to incarceration.

CLEMENCY observes a world that few audiences have gotten a realistic look into. Most American prison films include melodramatic depictions of prison life (i.e. over the top fights, dehumanizing “criminals”), but CLEMENCY is rooted in an unfiltered realism that will, hopefully, force audiences to connect to the humanities that exist between prison walls.” – Chinonye Chukwu

 

#ClemencyFilm is coming to the UK on JULY 17. Support your local cinema and watch at clemencythefilm.co.uk

#ClemencyFilm

 

Now more than ever your support is vital to spotlighting films by women #reclaimtheframe

 

Reclaim The Frame is a mission to bring ever-greater audiences to films by women to widen and enrich cinema’s perspective of the world, run by charity Birds’ Eye View, and backed by the BFI’s Audience Fund. To learn more and join the #ReclaimTheFrame mission (it’s free, everyone is welcome) you can receive free cinema tickets, discount viewing codes and other film goodies go to