Storyline
Set inside a single room in Folsom Prison, three men from the outside participate in a four-day group-therapy retreat with a group of incarcerated men for a real look at the challenges of rehabilitation.
Filming Locations: Folsom State Prison - 300 Prison Road, Represa, California, USA
Technical Specs
Runtime:
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Trivia:
Filmed in 2009. See more »
User Review
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Rating: 10/10
The Work was extremely well-received during its world premiere at
Austin SXSW Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize in
Documentary Feature Competition. This is one of the most intense films
that you will ever see and it literally takes your breath away. It is
follows several prisoners – many serving long sentences for violent,
often gang-related, crimes - in a group therapy program at Folsom
Prison over a four-day period in which they push each other to confront
their demons. They discuss their betrayals which often involve
deep-seated and painful issues in their family lives. They confront
each physically and emotionally. They open up the darkest corners of
their lives so that outside observers can understand that much of the
anger that made them criminals comes from deep well-springs of personal
suffering and often abuse.
Indirectly, this film asks a very deep question about our criminal
justice system: Is it supposed to warehouse and punish offenders or is
it supposed to rehabilitate them to return to society? If it is the
former it is doing so at a very great cost. If it is the latter than we
need to invest in programs like this so that we can return these men to
as productive members of society. This film shows us what
rehabilitation looks like and subtly makes that argument. We need a
national conversation about how the criminal justice system is failing
and about how we can begin to repair it. We have begun discussing some
aspects of this complex problem including reconsidering the "War on
Drugs," but we also need to be discussing how to rehabilitate those
currently imprisoned as well. I hope that it gains distribution so that
a wider audience can see this powerful and compelling film and begin
this conversation about the criminal justice system.
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