When film-makers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited Alabama’s Easterling prison in 2019, they found a deceptively pleasant scene. Like Alabama’s 13 other prisons, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but allowed the documentarians to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue, a sunny day in which incarcerated men, most of them Black, ate fresh roasts to live music and sermons. On camera, men danced and smiled. But off camera, many more told a different story – horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, unimaginable violence swept under the rug and appalling conditions that “ain’t fit for human society”. Cries for help emerged from inside the sweltering, filthy dorms. When Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official shut down filming, claiming that it was unsafe for him to speak to the men without a police chaperone.
“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki, whose credits include Capturing the Friedmans and The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, recalled recently. “They use the idea that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you to understand what they’re doing. These prisons are like black sites.” In the short visit, the crew received the same message over and over: “We don’t have access to the outside world. Please share this.”
