Interview: Jessica Sanders
Jessica Sanders's debut feature-length documentary After Innocence follows eight men wrongfully imprisoned for decades, then released thanks to DNA evidence, examining the harsh reality these men face when thrown back on the streets with virtually no compensation for the life they've lost. Sanders received Oscar® and Emmy® nominations in 2002 as producer of the short documentary Sing!; her narrative short Los Angels was a film festival award winner, and she is a proud alum of Film Independent's Project:Involve, Producers Lab, and Fast Track programs. After Innocence—which has been shortlisted for a 2006 Oscar—opens at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles on January 13.

What's the latest news on After Innocence?

The film just opened in Philadelphia—our fifth city, I think—and it had a strong, month-long run in New York. The L.A. opening date really launches the whole national release; we're going to over 50 cities around the country. There's a whole outreach of the component of the film where we hook up with a local innocence project in each community and get the local exonerees to do talkbacks so people can find out about how they can get involved in the issue. We're using the film to support compensation legislation in states that don't give any money or any help to exonerees. So we're using the film to help bring awareness and change. There's a whole grassroots element to it.

How much of this grassroots approach to distribution was a part of the project from the very beginning?

Well, New Yorker films is our distributor, and Showtime also gave major financing for the film so it'll be airing eventually. In making the film, I knew it was incredibly dramatic to tell the story of the innocent and the exonerated and what happens to them, and it was a story that hadn't been told. There's a lot of media attention to people getting out, but the real story is what happens to them, which is that they just get thrown on the street. As a filmmaker, it's a dramatic and compelling story, but also there was a whole other side that with awareness and with a film you can actually help create change. So that was a conscious aspect of it, but I think when you make an independent film, especially a documentary, you don't know that it's going to get out into the world in the way that you hope it will be. Luckily, I think winning at Sundance and doing well at a lot of other festivals and getting a lot of notoriety through that, that's how we got a distributor. In the beginning I'd hoped for it, but you never know.

Tell me how you first became aware of this issue as a potential project and how it became something you committed to.

I had been working on an NBC documentary series called Crime and Punishment, following the prosecution side of criminal trials. I had thought about innocence, but it wasn't until I was contacted by my producing partner, Marc Simon, who is a former student at the [Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law] Innocence Project, that I really got into it. Marc said he was a lawyer looking for a filmmaker and I thought it was such a dramatic story that hadn't been told. Soon after, I met the exonerees, and when you see the film they're such positive, inspiring people—I was actually shocked by meeting them and was really inspired, so that's how it started.

How long did the whole process take from when Marc first contacted you all the way through when you started shooting?

We had no money, but I just knew I wanted to do it so it didn't matter that we didn't have any money. The fundraising process is difficult and it took about a year; we just kind of cobbled together funds, got a couple of grants, and I got into the [Film Independent] Producers Lab, which was helpful. And at the end of the grants running out, Showtime came in with major financing. So it took a year and a half of fundraising and shooting simultaneously.

Did you just set a date at one point and say, "Regardless of how much money we have, we're just going to go start this?"

Well, it's funny because it's not like in dramatic film where you have to get all the money and then you shoot it all. It's like, "Okay, this thing is happening—someone is getting out of prison and we have to go film it!", so I would just jump on a plane. Actually, the first shoot was the 10th anniversary of the Innocence Project, and it's actually the opening scene of the film. It brought together 30 DNA exonerees - it was almost like a casting call for the film! I met half the people that came to be in the film. We didn't have any money but I had to go, so I got a couple of cinematographer friends who donated their time or did it deferred. You just kind of make it happen; you can't miss those moments in documentary.

Documentary is incredibly hot these days for many reasons and as such is sparking a lot of debate - people are going back and forth about what a documentarian's accountability is in terms of portraying truth or fact. How did you balance being an artist and having the goal of presenting something cinematically compelling with being true to the subjects of your documentary and not exploiting them?

That's definitely something to be very conscious of, the whole exploitation factor, and in a film like this it was done in I think a really positive, good way to bring awareness and change. I know my filmmaking style is really different from Michael Moore or Werner Herzog, where they're actually characters in their films. In my film, you feel my presence maybe because there's always going to be somebody guiding the viewer through hundreds of hours of footage, and there's how I ask questions and how I want to shape the piece. But I'm very aware that the subjects of the film are way more compelling or interesting than I would be. I would never put myself in a film like this as a character, and I know that their stories and what they say and what they do is going to be a lot more powerful and compelling. Stylistically, that's what really guided the film. Also, going into the film I knew how I wanted to vaguely structure it, but I didn't realize how it would become, in my eyes, a really positive film. Basically the film emulates the men in that they all want change and they all are activists. So the filmmaking process and how I structured it really reflected the people in it.

Have you encountered any negative feedback? What about audiences—have any of them reacted negatively?

No one's come up to me and said, "They're really guilty!" or anything like that. For the most part people are more emotional and more angry at the system, angry at what they're seeing and shocked—they can't believe that this is going on today.

Let's address the fact that your parents are filmmakers [documentarians Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders] and that you had this example or felt it was the family business. Did you feel compelled at an early age to get into this business, and did having parents who did the same thing help or hinder you?

Growing up in a family where both my parents were documentary filmmakers, I would travel around the world with them and I met amazing people. A lot of the subjects of their films are people who are intimately involved in our families' lives. So it was just an extension of my growing up, what they did, and I think I definitely learned a lot just by observing and being around them as filmmakers—their sensibilities, and their approach to filmmaking. I think you can see some of that in After Innocence. It's been great to have my parents as my mentors. I just went through Sundance and my mom just got into Sundance, so I'm advising her the way she advised me. It's kind of cool that we can be colleagues—for a lot of people in filmmaking, their parents just don't understand them, but my parents really understand! (Laughs) Actually, my dad shot a couple of days on my film.

That's handy!

Yes! When we were in the very low-budget period and we had no money, I was like, "Dad, can you help me out?" (Laughs)

Were you conscious while developing your style over the years in trying to do things that would differentiate you from them? Did you ever say to yourself, "I'm never going to do this like they did!"?

Not really. It wasn't until halfway into college that I knew that I wanted to make films, so it wasn't like, "My whole life I've been struggling against my parents!" And I think that each film in your own career is a totally different animal, so it wasn't about doing it like them, it was just unique to what the film was. But I do know that I want to pursue dramatic filmmaking and there are certain dramatic elements in my film that I was very conscious about, developing character and also the dramatic arc of the film. So in the future, I want to continue doing documentaries but also do dramatic work whereas my parents are mostly documentary filmmakers. Maybe that would be the rebellion if there is one.

So are you working on a narrative now or diving into a new documentary?

I've started a new documentary and I'm writing a dramatic screenplay. I'm doing a lot of things right now. And right now there's so much great crossover with filmmakers that you can do both [documentaries and narratives]. There's no reason to just do one.

Looking back, how did going through Project:Involve, then the Producers Lab, and then Fast Track help you get to where you are now?

Basically, Film Independent has been there literally from day one for me. As soon as I graduated college I was in Project:Involve, which was huge for me and my development as an independent filmmaker because it gave me a community. I met a lot of great young filmmakers and it gave me a lot of resources; I think sometimes in L.A. you feel like there's just "Hollywood" and Project:Involve gave me a sense of community that I don't think people in even New York have so much. The Producers Lab was really supportive of me and of independent filmmakers so I feel special and lucky to have had it. So far, Film Independent has been incredibly supportive of the project and I just think I'm lucky to be involved with it. I truly do feel that you guys have been there from day one.