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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
Truth Has Fallen: Freeing the Innocent “Truth Has Fallen” joins the growing group of films about criminal injustice in the United States that have emerged on the documentary landscape. A career animator, Sheila M. Sofian’s film stands out by virtue of her utilization of ‘expressionistic animation’ in the telling of her stories.
Sofian’s hour-long film features live-action reenactments woven with her animation. In that time we hear from James McCloskey who founded Centurion Ministries, and who reinvestigates murder cases where justice may not have been served. McCloskey’s work has freed 25 people who have been wrongfully accused, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned. We also hear from three of those people, Eddie Baker, Joyce Ann Brown, and Jimmy Landano.
This is the third masterfully-produced documentary film about wrongful convictions and incarcerations I’ve had the sad pleasure to see. The injustice is fed by a number of factors: police, prosecutorial, and judicial malfeasance along with economic inequities—wealthy defendants hire their own lawyers who, in part, do the kind of investigative work that McCloskey does post facto.
The film includes solutions to some of the problems causing this injustice, and the film’s well-produced website includes several links to organizations fighting to free ‘the convicted innocent.’
“Truth Has Fallen” is currently playing the festival circuit. You can, of course, check in with the website to find screenings and to learn about its eventual availability on disc and VOD.