Festival documentary unveils shocking abuse in US prisons

Incarcerated men in the Alabama prison system risked their safety to feed shocking footage of their horrifying living conditions to a pair of documentary filmmakers.

The result is “The Alabama Solution,” which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman became interested in Alabama prisons in 2019. Jarecki, the filmmaker behind “The Jinx” and “Capturing the Friedmans,” and Kaufman first gained access to the restricted grounds through a visit with a chaplain during a revival meeting held in the prison yards.

There men pulled them aside and whispered shocking stories about the reality of life inside: forced labor, drugs, violence, intimidation, retaliation and the undisclosed truths behind many prisoner deaths.

The Associated Press has written extensively about the problems in the state’s prison system, including high rates of violence, low staffing, a plummeting parole rate and the use of pandemic funds to build a new supersized prison.

This process eventually led them to incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (also known as “Kinetik Justice”) who had for years been trying to expose the horrifying conditions and deep-seated corruption across the system.

They helped feed dispatches to the filmmakers with contraband cellphones.

“We’re deeply concerned for their safety, and we have been since the first time we met them,” said Kaufman. “They’ve been doing this work for decades and as you see in the film, they’ve been retaliated against in very extreme ways.

But there are lawyers who are ready to do wellness checks and visit them and respond to any sort of retaliation that may come.”

'All over the nation'

On Tuesday at the first showing of the film, Charlotte Kaufman had Council on the phone listening in. They put the microphone up to the cellphone so that Council could speak.

Several family members of their incarcerated subjects were also in the audience, including Sandy Ray, the mother of Steven Davis, who died in 2019 at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, his face beaten beyond recognition.

Prison officials said Davis was killed in self-defence because he didn’t put down his weapons. The prisoners tell a vastly different story.

Alelur “Alex” Duran, who spent 12 years in prison in New York, also helped produce the film. Jarecki said they wouldn't have taken on the subject without the expertise of someone who had been incarcerated.

“What you’re seeing in this film is going on all over the nation,” Duran said.