Recommends Film
Francine Stock
The Work
Released on Friday 8th September
In a California jail, group therapy sessions for maximum-security inmates have been running since the early 2000s. Now these anger-purging courses have opened up to curious outsiders. Directors Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous confine the action of their award-winning documentary largely to one room and one course, with the prisoners working intensively with incomers. Be prepared for sound, fury and action: the cameras surge and settle. There’s always a suspicion with filmed therapy that the subjects are grandstanding but it’s hard to detect how the dynamism here could be faked. The prisoners prove the healers, dispensing their hard-earned insights to men who— unlike them—can leave when they want.