Tehachapi

French visual artist-director JR situates his latest social-art intervention in a Southern Californian supermax prison, where he has imagined an enormously ambitious collaboration with the facility’s inmates. The plan: to paste a photo of inmates, large enough to encompass the entire prison yard, and then to have each portrait carry a story, to be accessed through a smartphone app or the web. We hear stories of repentance and of mistakes made and pleas for understanding. It’s an aching, subtle, and thought-provoking indictment on America’s mass incarceration system and a successful attempt to give voice and humanity to the men who are trapped inside. Thanks to JR’s radical empathy, this intimate and immersive documentary discovers perseverance and hope in a seemingly hopeless place. (Telluride Film Festival)