PARK CITY, Utah — I’ve been recommending “The Alabama Solution” to everyone I meet since I landed at the Sundance Film Festival last week — but only under my breath.
That’s because Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s bombshell investigation of the Alabama prison system, which premiered here Tuesday, was screened in advance for press under strict embargo. Understandable, once you realize that the film’s key sources are inmates themselves. Much of “The Alabama Solution,” which reports on inhumane living conditions, forced labor and widespread violence against the state’s incarcerated population, is comprised largely of footage captured by inmates using contraband cellphones, offering one of the most shocking, visceral depictions of our carceral state ever put to film.
The result, in which brave inmate activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council leak vital information, and the filmmakers chase down leads with shoe-leather doggedness, should outrage the nation. And encourage us to reexamine our own backyards: As co-producer Alex Duran reminded me, California voters recently rejected a ballot measure that would have banned forced prison labor, and incarcerated firefighters were instrumental to the battle against the recent L.A. wildfires.
Jarecki and Kaufman sat down with me at the L.A. Times Studios at Sundance to discuss the risks their sources face with the film’s release, what they’d like to ask Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and more. The following has been edited and condensed.
Before we talk about the genesis of the film, I wanted to start with your interest in the subject matter of the film: mass incarceration, the criminal justice system, prison conditions. What was your level of interest in that topic before “The Alabama Solution”?
Andrew Jarecki: I remember going to see Jesse Friedman at Dannemora Correctional Facility when I was making “Capturing the Friedmans,” and the experience of going into a maximum-security facility in upstate New York was such a surprise to me — just the level of lockdown, the level of closure to the outside world and certainly to journalists. So it always intrigued me. And then I’d made films about various aspects of the justice system. So when I went down to Alabama in 2019, just to sort of go to Montgomery and see what I would see, I met this prison chaplain and I realized that they went into the prisons and did barbecues and revival meetings. I thought. “Maybe there’s an opportunity to go there and learn something.” And I don’t think I thought about it as a film up front. I just was curious. But then when it became clear that there was a possibility for us to film, Charlotte and I got together and and went down there and we had this really extraordinary chance to go into a place that is normally absolutely closed to the media and to the public.
Charlotte, I wonder if you could talk about the story of that day at the barbecue. I’m curious, did you have a kind of vision of what you thought you were doing before you arrived that day? Obviously, once the prisoners start coming up to you and and saying, “There’s a story here that they’re not showing you,” that changed it, but did you have a different vision going in?
Charlotte Kaufman: I think we went in with open minds. You rarely get the opportunity to go into a prison facility in Alabama, and I think we saw this as a great opportunity to be able 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 were only certain conversations that we were allowed to have and that we weren’t allowed to speak to the men alone. And I think that lack of access sort of compelled us to keep investigating.
After the first scene in the film, there’s a title card that explains that after your visit, you started getting outreach from inmates within the prison on contraband cellphones. And the footage from those calls that they’re sending you is at the core of the film, and it’s part of what makes it so shocking and outrageous. Take me back to the first outreach that you got. What was your reaction?
Jarecki: I mean, we were surprised when we went in there at the proliferation of cellphones. The fact that Alabama’s prisons are so extraordinarily understaffed and under-resourced means that the prisons are often operating with [a] skeleton crew of people. So you could have a 1,400-bed facility and that normally would be staffed with a few hundred officers. And maybe on a weekend there are 20 officers there. So that indicates that there’s a very low level of understanding even by correctional officers. There are large areas of the prison that they don’t spend any time in. So the ability to speak to these men on these cellphones, which are, in my view, largely brought in by the officers — there’s a big trade in cellphones — that was just a surprise to us. As much as I think it has been people seeing the film and saying, how is that even possible that they have these phones?
One of the things that watching it like really disturbed, upset me were just what they would show you about what the living conditions were like. Flooded floors, overflowing toilets, rats everywhere. Were you that shocked? Was that your response when you started seeing those images coming from your sources on the inside?
Kaufman: The Department of Justice had put out a very in-depth report about their own investigation into Alabama’s prison system. But it’s a very different experience reading the facts and reading the findings, versus actually seeing it. There is something that makes you really understand what it’s like to live in that environment when you can actually see it. And I think 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’s actually happening. Because when you do see it, it becomes a lot less tolerable.
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Over the course of this six-year process, you formed relationships with your main sources inside the facilities. Now, with the film coming out — and as the film explores — they are at risk of reprisal from correctional officers and higher up. What were your ethical concerns about revealing their specific identities, and what were your conversations like with them about the risks and their ultimate willingness to undertake those risks?
Jarecki: We thought a lot about that issue, because obviously the more you get to know people that are in that situation, the more you recognize their vulnerability and the more you feel connected to them. There’s no avoiding that. And it was kind of a beautiful thing about the film that you get to see the humanity in these people who are often seen by society through a very different lens. So we always thought about it and spoke extensively to them about it. These are men who had 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 — we were part of their agenda, in a way. It was very important for them to do this work. And so we were kind of there to ride along. So it was a symbiotic process. They’re very well known to the authorities inside and they have been retaliated against in the past. So we’re concerned. We continue to be concerned about it. And there’s been an organization that’s created a defense committee to help them if that does come to pass.
I wanted to talk a little bit about your qualitative experiences as filmmakers with this unique process where your sources are separated from you by the divide of the prison walls, but you’re talking to them regularly. This struck me during the narrative about the prison strike and then the breaking of the strike: You’re both at one level getting more information than the general public is getting through the news media, but you’re also not close enough to it to really feel like there’s any kind of control that you can exert. What is that like for you emotionally or creatively as filmmakers?
Kaufman: It’s a very intense experience to follow along and watch this incredibly inspiring and moving movement of the strike but then also watch how the state responds. It’s a privilege to be able to have these extended conversations with all of our participants. But at the same time, that’s why the film is so urgent, because they’re at risk and they’re doing their activism regardless of this film. And that’s also what puts them at risk. They’ve been retaliated against for their activism for like two decades now.
Jarecki: These are men who have been the victims of violence in the system and often violence by people who are allegedly supposed to look out for their safety. And so the ability to have that kind of up-close contact with them and recognize the bravery that they’re showing in being able to share this, it’s such a high level of trust that had to be established for them to allow us to sort of ride along and see this incredibly unique kind of protest. But it’s really important to recognize, despite the violence that they have been subjected to, all of their work is nonviolent. They’re extremely thoughtful about the importance of nonviolent action. And the fact that the state, which has all the machinery of government and all kinds of special military equipment, can’t find a way to respond to them except through violence is really an example of how the system is pretty topsy-turvy.
The title of the film comes from an oft-used phrase by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who is an interviewed in the film. If you got the chance to get her on the record on camera, what would you ask her?
Jarecki: The first question I would ask her is whether she visits the prisons. And I’m quite sure that she would say, “Well, on one occasion…,” something like that. We probably would both be eager to have that conversation. But 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, for her to just keep proposing solutions that are not solutions.
Kaufman: I would ask her to give us access. We were able to make this film because we had some really brave individuals who took great risks to have conversations with us, to share material with us. But I would ask her, “What would it take for you to actually allow transparency and for the media to be able to come in and talk to the men freely and to bring cameras in freely?”
Jarecki: There’s a fact that we’ve sort of been talking about how to convey. It’s sort of an extraordinary statistic that I’m pretty sure that governor doesn’t know. Of many statistics I think the governor’s not familiar with. But when you learn about the work programs, essentially forced labor that happens inside the system, of the 20,000 men who are in that system, many of them are caused to work inside the prisons, outside the prisons, on road crews around the state and even at McDonald’s and many other companies. The state is putting them to work and the corrections department is gathering the money for that work and the men are getting a tiny sliver of that. What’s extraordinary is that the people who are allowed to work and who are considered safe enough to be in the community interacting — you see some of them in the film walking around the state fair, walking around the governor’s mansion — those people are less likely, statistically, to be paroled than the people who are at the next highest level of concern for safety. People who are considered safer are less likely to be let out, arguably because they are more valuable as people who can be put to work. … I don’t think anybody’s doing that math because I don’t think it’s of great concern to them, partly because they too are isolated from being able to see what’s happening in their own system.