
Independent Lens
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
This immersive 21st century vision of young people living and striving in Alabama’s Black Belt is an Oscar nominee composed of pure film poetry.
From Pelican Bay State Prison, Sansón’s life is defined by borders—between Mexico and the U.S., fact and fiction, personal choice and systemic force.
Rodrigo Reyes has received the support of Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, California Humanities Council, Film Independent, IFP Narrative and Documentary Labs, the Mexican Film Institute, and more. In 2015, his documentary Purgatorio was selected as the Season Premiere for America ReFramed. In 2017, Rodrigo was selected for the… Show more
Su Kim is a documentary producer and a 2015 Women at Sundance Fellow. Su received the 2021 Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producers Award. She produced Free Chol Soo Lee, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Her recent film Hale County This Morning, This Evening, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
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Set in rural California and Mexico’s Pacific coast, director Rodrigo Reyes' documentary is a moving portrait of the unlikely friendship of two Mexican migrants, told within the frame of the dramatic clash between systemic forces and personal choices that envelop young, incarcerated men of color in America.
Sansón’s life is defined by borders—between Mexico and the United States, between freedom and incarceration, between fact and fiction. While serving two life sentences for first-degree murder in Pelican Bay State Prison, Sansón grapples with the ways he has traversed these borders, moving from country to country, from rural California to solitary confinement, and from the truths of his life to the mythologies he’s created. A tale told through dramatic reenactments, Sansón and Me recreates a life of multilayered border crossing as told by Sansón to his interpreter-turned-friend, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes. In vividly portraying Sansón’s life from orphaned Mexican child to American prisoner, Reyes reveals one man’s attempt at reconciling the things that have happened to him and the things he has brought on himself.
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