Challenge
Before the current consensus for criminal justice reform, Found Object partner, Gabriel London, began developing a film on a brilliant prison escape artist with a questionable conviction that trapped him behind bars. When, 13 years later, we premiered The Mind of Mark DeFriest at HotDocs, the great question was how to take a moving narrative and give it real world impact.
With a small earned and social media budget, coupled with periodic film festival and university screenings, what could we accomplish for criminal justice reform and DeFriest, himself?
Insight
Audiences at screenings that ask “what can I do?” deserve an answer and are primed to join a criminal justice campaign.
At early screenings, we saw that Mark DeFriest’s story moved audiences and prompted them to act, both in his case and in a