AFTER INNOCENCE International Documentary Competition

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, AFTER INNOCENCE skillfully tells the dramatic story of the exonerated-innocent men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

Director Jessica Sanders draws in the audience, documenting not just the flood of reversed convictions that DNA evidence has visited upon a seriously flawed criminal justice system, but also what happens to those exonerated once they have been set free. Included are a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father sent to death row for decades, for crimes they did not commit. The men are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. While the public views exonerations as success stories-wrongs that have been righted-AFTER INNOCENCE shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served.

Sanders achieves a captivating directorial style, drinking in the day-to-day reality of her subjects’ lives in limbo, as they pave the way to an uncertain future, telling a haunting and truly unforgettable story.