Andrew Jarecki

government, the Alabama state prison system thinks, is that if somebody brings the light of journalism, it's going to be a problem and it needs to be eliminated because it's a weapon and it prevents them from doing what they would otherwise do.

So these men are kind of really freedom fighters.

We just don't get to see them.

We don't get to know them.

And there's a lot of propaganda to say, don't even talk to those guys, you know.

When we first went into that very first prison you see, the warden said to us, look, you can talk to that guy and that guy.

You can't go over there and you can't go over there.

And I said, why can't we talk to anybody?

And he said, oh, they're very dangerous.

You don't want to talk to these men.

And when we went in, I always felt so much more comfortable talking to the men who were incarcerated than the guards.

I was much more comfortable with the men, right?

And they're just trying to tell you their story.

I wouldn't say for appearing in the film, but for their activism throughout time.

You'll see in the film, they're regularly retaliated against.

And most recently, you know, the film was out for like a year.

And then they hadn't been retaliated against.

And then they announced or their supporters announced a work strike.

And that's very, very problematic for Alabama.

They get $450 million a year in unpaid labor.