‘The Alabama Solution,' documentary chronicling the horrific conditions inside the state's prison system, premieres at Sundance

Yahoo

30-01-2025

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — A new documentary from the team behind the true crime phenomenon 'The Jinx' will explore life in Alabama's prison system.
'The Alabama Solution,' a documentary from filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be available on HBO later this year.
Jarecki is known for the true crime series 'The Jinx' involving wealthy eccentric Robert Durst and the different murders he is accused of over the years. The series was historic in that it seemingly captured Durst's confession to one of the murders. Kaufman served as a producer on 'The Jinx' and was also involved in 'The Innocence Files.'
The film includes interview with inmates in some of Alabama's prisons, but the real revelations come in cell phone footage secretly recorded by the inmates of what truly goes on behind bars.
'You rarely get the opportunity to go into a prison facility in Alabama and I think we saw this great opportunity to speak with some of the men, to just observe what we could around the facility, to learn what we could, but very quickly, it became clear that there are only certain conversations that we were allowed to have,' Kaufman said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Kaufman said this secrecy around the Alabama Department of Corrections gave her and Jarecki the drive to keep pursuing the project over five years.
'That's why prisons are so secret, that's why we're not allowed to see in and we can only read papers about what is actually happening because when you do see it, it becomes less tolerable,' she said.
In the interview with the Times, Jarecki said it was important to capture the stories of inmates who have been trying to get the word out for years about the substandard conditions inside these prisons, but also make sure they were protected.
'These are men who have been working on their own for many years to get the word out on the crisis in this prison system, so when we first started talking, they were very clear that we were part of their agenda, in a way,' Jarecki said. 'It was very important for them to do this work, so we were kind of there to ride along, so it was a symbiotic process.'
Jarecki said he would've liked to interview Gov. Kay Ivey, who did not participate in the film. A $1 billion prison in Elmore that was partially funded through COVID-19 relief funds will be named after her.
'My first question would be to try to really understand how insulated she must be from what's happening to her own citizens of her own state to keep proposing solutions that are not solutions,' he said.
Reviews of the film so far have been glowing.
''The Alabama Solution' is difficult to watch, and impossible to watch without escalating anger,' Daniel Feinberg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'There isn't easy catharsis or an easy non-Alabama solution, but it's impossible to deny that something better must be done.'
No release date has been announced yet.
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