Andrew Jarecki

a whole segment of the population that's just been abandoned and not just abandoned, but also harmed.

And then we discovered that there were these men inside who were leaders, who were really civil rights leaders who had been managing like a nonviolent protest movement for years, even before we got there.

And so we had the benefit of, you know, it was like talking to Mandela on Robben Island on a cell phone.

Yeah.

I mean, it was an enormously eye-opening and I would say violent experience to be drawn into that and to understand that

The only way that these people can get away with treating human beings this way is if it's in darkness.

You know, you can't do this if the public knows that you're doing it.

Even a jaded public in Alabama who, you know, as you know very well, Alabama is sort of inured to certain kinds of indignities.

And, you know, they're very...

uh propagandized group you know it's sort of very tough on crime and the politicians really like weaponize the crime victims to just have this constant narrative it's like watching cops 24 hours a day it's just an advertisement for poor people are crazy and dangerous and so being able to to um

eliminate that layer you know that that propaganda layer you know there's a great line i mean one of the leaders in the film um robert earl counsel who goes by kinetic justice says you know i'm in prison i'm supposed to lie i'm supposed to exaggerate i'm supposed to make up excuses so

That narrative is so strong that unless we can tell the story directly to people, they're just going to assume that it's not true.

And, you know, and I felt like going into the prisons there, I was far more, you know, they would say, oh, well, don't talk to the men because they're very dangerous and they're going to tell you lies and so on.

And I felt so much more comfortable talking to the men who were incarcerated than the guards.

Well, you know, my biggest anxiety was that we were not going to be able to get enough material talking to the men.

Obviously, this archival material where you can see really telling things that happen, there was an embarrassment of...

traumatic events.

I mean, it was just a, that was like terabytes worth of that material.

Um, but being able to talk directly to the men and,

Once you do it, once you're talking to them for five minutes, you think, this is the only thing I want to watch.