Clemency
classifiedSuitable only for 15 years and over
Please note: This event took place in July 2020
Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s critically acclaimed film follows a prison warden (Alfre Woodard) whose world is upended by the fate of death-row inmates.
Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden, Bernadine Williams (Woodard). The years spent hiding any shred of visible emotion which could be seen by those around her as feminine weakness, have resulted in her drifting away from her husband and the memories of a recently botched execution plague her daily. She finds herself bonding with death-row inmate Anthony Woods, and all her repressed emotions begin to rise, forcing Bernadine to confront the complex-and often contradictory-relationship between good intentions, unrequited desires, and what it really means to be sanctioned to kill.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival 2019, Clemency is a radically empathic look at life inside death row, brought to life by Alfre Woodard's performance-of-a-lifetime alongside Aldis Hodge, Wendell Pierce and Richard Schiff.