High-Profile Filmmakers Take Aim at U.S. Criminal ‘Justice’ System With Sundance Documentaries

variety.com:

Gregg Goldstein In an election year when civil rights are being threatened, authoritarianism is spreading around the globe and minorities are a popular political target, it’s no wonder that films exploring the U.S.

criminal justice system are everywhere you look in the Sundance Film Festival lineup. “There’s so much inequality and injustice in the justice system,” says “God Save Texas: Hometown Prison” director Richard Linklater. “There’s a lot to be outraged by and examined.” Variety spoke with him and other filmmakers such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Debra Granik and Yance Ford about their Park City projects — when taken together, they paint a devastating and sometimes hopeful picture of contemporary policing, criminal trials, incarceration and rehabilitation.

Linklater’s “Prison,” inspired by Lawrence Wright’s book “God Save Texas,” is the first feature in a doc trilogy about his home state, debuting Jan.

23 in Park City and late February on HBO and Max. Though you wouldn’t know it from the pleasant friends he interviews, or comedies like “Dazed and Confused” and “Bernie” that he filmed there, his hometown of Huntsville is the unofficial capitol of the state’s prison system, with the most executions in Texas, which is the leading state for executions in the nation by far. “It’s a humanitarian crisis, not just for the people being executed, but a lot of other people and their families,” Linklater says. “It’s a big industry, spreading a lot of pain to a lot of people who have to [work there and] participate in it from every angle.