By Bailey Pennick

“We are here in your name.”

Melvin Ray is speaking directly to the Library Theatre audience at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. However, unlike most post-premiere discussions, he’s not standing in front of the screen with a mic. Instead, he sent in a pre-recorded message from his prison cell at Easterling Correctional Facility in Clio, Barbour County, Alabama. Ray is one of the main subjects within Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s essential and infuriating new documentary, The Alabama Solution. 

Composed primarily of contraband cell phone footage taken by incarcerated men at Easterling and other facilities across the state, The Alabama Solution exposes the inhumane conditions, systemic injustice, and brutal treatment of those behind bars in the Alabama prison system told through their own voices and their own stories. The film expertly weaves the pressing issues of prison privatization, inmate slave labor, abuse of power, government corruption, and extreme violence together to help audiences on the outside get a real sense of the abhorrent conditions of our fellow human beings.

Jarecki, one of the film’s writer-directors, acknowledges that this isn’t an easy project when introducing it for the first time. “It’s a lot to take in,” he says. “And it is difficult to watch.” He’s not wrong, but it is paramount that we engage with the film and its subjects. 

When the film ventures out of the lens of the currently incarcerated, it focuses on the family of Steven Davis, a prisoner who was beaten to death by guards at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. The image that his brother took of his corpse is horrific, something you cannot unsee, but what is even more cruel is that Davis’ grieving loved ones — including his mother, Sandy, who is present for the premiere — can’t get a straight answer or even a call back from the prison explaining what happened to Davis. It breaks your heart.

As she appears before the Festival crowd at the post-premiere discussion, and is asked how she feels about what she just saw, Sandy is overcome with emotion. “Sad, happy,” she starts, never speaking barely above a whisper. “I know more about what happened to Stevie. It’s been five years just to give me some sort of clarity. I thought it would never happen to my family, but it did.” The audience gives her a standing ovation — the third of the premiere — and then begins to wonder where we go from here, having seen the horrors that American tax dollars are paying for.

Jarecki reveals that a class action lawsuit against the state of Alabama for implementing a system of slave labor — with Ray and Robert Earl (aka Kinetik Justice) as plaintiffs — has already gained momentum based on the documentary footage sourced from the inmates. “This is where we pass the baton to you,” says Ray. “You should be demanding access to the insides of these prisons and the people who are being warehoused in your name.” He and Earl are founders of the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), an inmate-led organization that supports the nonviolent and peaceful protests for civil and human rights of those who are incarcerated. They know this is a long road to progress, but hope this film will help jumpstart the movement on the outside. 

“Push for legislation for complete transparency and accountability inside these institutions,” Earl adds within their pre-recorded video for the crowd. “And then, only then, will we get a grip on the violation of the Eighth Amendment rights of all prisoners.” From the tear-stained faces and the several questions about next steps and how to help, The Alabama Solution struck a chord with the audience. Hopefully this urgency will radiate out to new levels of activism on a national level. Because while this film focuses on Alabama’s system, notoriously one of the deadliest in the country, the corruption and abuse seen is not exclusive to the Yellowhammer state.

It’s hard to catch your breath at the end of the film because there’s no way to go back to being blind to the injustice and the corruption that exists within our own institutions. There’s a feeling of helplessness in the shadow of the larger prison industrial complex, and dismay at what to do next. Ray’s words to the audience are full of something that isn’t so easily found within the doc: hope. “We don’t know what tomorrow may bring,” he says about his commitment to seeking justice. “But what we do know about today is that we’re going to give everything that we have in the struggle for this freedom.” Let’s get started today.