**Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards Nominee: Best First Time Filmmaker**
**WINNER: Sundance 2018 Audience Award: U.S. Documentary**
**WINNER: 2018 Traverse City Film Festival Roger Ebert Prize For Best Film By A First Time Filmmaker**
**2018 Locarno International Film Festival Official Selection**
“An instance of America’s institutions of powers being prodded into attempting to undo an injustice… a privilege to behold.”
Alan Scherstuhl, L.A. Weekly
“A powerful film full of rich, raw emotions as all parties explore their vulnerabilities.”
John Fink, The Film Stage
“An incredibly intimate and exposed piece of family storytelling… a tale guaranteed to make you sob.”
Daniel Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter
“While much of “The Sentence” is devoted to how helpless his family has been made to feel, the result is mighty.”
Stephen Saito, Moveable Fest
Synopsis:
Drawing from hundreds of hours of footage, filmmaker Rudy Valdez shows the aftermath of his sister Cindy’s 15-year sentence for conspiracy charges related to crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend—something known, in legal terms, as “the girlfriend problem.” Valdez’s method of coping with this tragedy is to film his sister’s family for her, both the everyday details and the milestones—moments Cindy herself can no longer share in. But in the midst of this nightmare, Valdez finds his voice as both a filmmaker and activist, and he and his family begin to fight for Cindy’s release during the last months of the Obama administration’s clemency initiative. Whether their attempts will allow Cindy to break free of her draconian sentence becomes the aching question at the core of this deeply personal portrait of a family in crisis.
TRT: 85 min.
Country: USA
