Apart

During Second Chance Awareness Month, Women Make Movies is highlighting films that shed light on the impact of mass incarceration. These films inspire dialogue about reentry programs designed to give returning community members agency and respect, keep families whole, build stronger and safer communities, and reduce recidivism long-term.

Don’t miss your chance to watch influential films like WINN (dir. Erica Tanamachi & Joseph East), which documents Pamela Winn’s mission to end shackling and ultimately prison birth, A WOMAN ON THE OUTSIDE (dir. Zara Katz & Lisa Riordan Seville), a deeply American story about prison-involved families and women caregivers, and APART (dir. Jennifer Redfearn), an intimate portrait of three women who return home from prison and rebuild their lives after being separated from their children for years.

A Woman on the Outside

A deeply American story about the legacy of mass incarceration. Kristal Bush, who has watched nearly every man in her life disappear into prison, channels her struggle into reuniting other Philadelphia families divided by the correctional system.
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WINN

This powerful, short documentary exposes the horrifying experience that incarcerated pregnant women endure and documents Pamela Winn's mission to end shackling and ultimately prison birth.
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Belly of the Beast

Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, this Emmy-winning documentary exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
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Apart

Against the backdrop of a Midwestern state battling industrial decline, an opioid epidemic, and rising incarceration rates, APART offers an intimate portrait of three women who return home from prison and rebuild their lives after being separated from their children for years.
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Love & Diane

Jennifer Dworkin’s groundbreaking documentary LOVE & DIANE presents a searingly honest and moving examination of poverty, welfare and drug rehabilitation in the United States today. Filmed in New York City over a five-year period, Dworkin documents the struggles of three generations of the Hazzard family as they face a myriad of emotional, financial and personal challenges. LOVE & DIANE is at its heart a highly charged story about a mother and daughter searching for love, redemption and hope for a new future. While caught in a devastating cycle of teen pregnancy and the bureaucracy of an over burdened welfare system, they demonstrate an inspiring resiliency and ability to find strength during the most desperate times. Without falling into stereotypes of welfare and poverty, LOVE & DIANE casts a fair, non-judgmental eye on the Hazzard’s and presents a forgotten, but very real, side of the American experience. This film is a presentation of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
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Mothers of Bedford

Women are the fastest-growing U.S. prison population today. Eighty percent are mothers of school-age children. Jenifer McShane's absorbing documentary gives human dimensions to these rarely reported statistics, taking us inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison north of New York City. Shot over four years, MOTHERS OF BEDFORD follows five women - of diverse backgrounds and incarcerated for different reasons- in dual struggles to be engaged in their children's lives and become their better selves. It shows how long-term sentences affect mother-child relationships and how Bedford's innovative Children's Center helps women maintain and improve bonds with children and adult relatives awaiting their return. Whether it be parenting's normal frustrations to celebrating a special day, from both inside and out of the prison walls, this moving film provides unprecedented access to a little known, rarely shown, community of women.
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